


This Thing of Darkness

by AuctaSinistra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 01:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18174236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuctaSinistra/pseuds/AuctaSinistra
Summary: Sequel to The Holly and The Ivy





	This Thing of Darkness

_“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” -- Shakespeare_

  
  
  
  
Draco Malfoy stood beside his mother in the sort of frigid, dank dungeon that made him uneasily conscious of his sins.  
  
Cold water trickled over the rough, bare stone walls, and the torches flickered resentfully, as though even that inadequate illumination were more than those present deserved. Given the various items they’d glimpsed in the faint red light, those present were grateful for the shadows.  
  
Draco and Narcissa stood close together, both stiff, both too proud to actually touch, to admit their trembling, even to each other.  
  
They had not long to wait before a tall man in black robes glided down the stairs. There was no banister – Narcissa had descended the slick, worn steps slowly, keeping close to the damp wall – but he moved as though he would have spurned such safety aids in any case, descending with unhurried swiftness, robes flowing, dark eyes flicking up to spot and focus upon them.  
  
Thin and graceful, he disturbed as little air as possible in his passage. He advanced to a distance just short of courteous, nodded slightly and raised his hands, pressing the long pale fingers together before him.  
  
“Cousin,” he greeted Narcissa. If any place would be conducive to echoes it was this place, but his voice was thin and harsh, without resonance or any feature to make it pleasant.  
  
“Gregor,” Narcissa responded. The dark, depthless eyes shifted to Draco, now as tall as his mother.  
  
“Nephew.” The word was dismissal, well-iced.  
  
“Uncle,” Draco said, giving as good as he got.  
  
“Why must we meet here?” Narcissa’s soft voice and darting, squeamish glance reflected her distaste. Draco concealed his annoyance, though he wondered, not for the first time, why she had come.  
  
“You must understand the plan if you are to successfully help me carry it out.” Gregor extended a long, scarecrow-thin arm toward a table littered with parchments and phials.  
  
“Help  _you_?” Draco demanded. “I thought you were going to help us.” The word was purest courtesy to his mother; she was weak, of no use in any ruthless endeavour.  
  
Gregor looked down at Draco, a moment of silence clearly communicating contempt. Draco steeled himself against the trembling; it was from cold, certainly, not fear. Lucius Malfoy would not have been afraid; Draco was not afraid either. He’d been telling himself that for the past quarter hour.  
  
“We share a goal, Master Malfoy,” Gregor said as if to a very small child, and smiled when Draco bristled. “We both desire vengeance upon the … boy … who destroyed our leader and our future.”  
  
“He killed my  _father!”_  Draco snapped. Narcissa touched his arm and he shook her off, furious. “That’s all I care about. He killed my father and I want him to pay. I want him dead.”  
  
Gregor smiled. “As I say, nephew. We share a goal.” He again gestured toward the table, like a waiter seeing customers to a prime spot. “Shall we?”  
  


* * *

  
  
_Dear Severus –_  
  
  
  
“Harry! What are you doing?”  
  
“I’m writing a letter.” Harry didn’t bother looking up though he could feel Ron and Hermione crossing the common room, headed for the corner where he sat cross-legged in a cushy chair.  
  
“Again?”   
  
That made Harry raise his head and drop his quill into the inkwell. He didn’t bother to cover the parchment; though Ron and Hermione knew perfectly well who he was writing to, he’d cast a charm that meant anyone passing by would see nothing but transfiguration notes. Hiding in plain sight was another strategy Snape had taught him.  
  
Ron and Hermione stopped before him, side by side, and he wondered if they knew how it made them look – as if they were arrayed against him.  
  
Hermione said, “We were going down to see Hagrid’s latest … pet.” Their friend had acquired a young selkie – they no longer asked how – a few days ago.  
  
“You lot go on,” Harry said. “I won’t be long.”  
  
Ron sighed. Hermione elbowed him, but her expression was the silent equivalent.  
  
“I’m asking him about our Defence classes,” Harry said patiently. “You’ve got to admit he knows a lot about that.”  
  
“Harry …” Ron began, a note of befuddled pleading in his voice.  
  
Harry waited.  
  
Typically, Hermione wasn’t at a loss for words. “We just wish you’d stop excluding us from everything you do. We wish you’d stop excluding yourself from everything we do. We wish we had our friend back.”  
  
“I’m still your friend,” Harry said. “I’m right here. I’m always here.”  
  
“But you’re not  _here,”_  Ron complained. “Even when you’re with us, you’re not with us.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes, marshalling patience, and Ron snapped, “You're doing it right now.”  
  
Harry opened his eyes, patience abandoned. “What do you want me to say? You want me to be the way I used to be. You want things not to change. But things do. We’ve all changed. And we don’t always get a choice as to how.”  
  
“We’re worried that you’re in over your head,” Hermione said, with a deliberate glance at the parchment.   
  
Harry felt his mouth twitch.  
  
“I’m always in over my head. Look, Voldemort’s gone. What’s the worst that can happen?”  
  
“He can really hurt you,” Hermione said gently. “You love him so much and he’s –”  
  
“What?” Harry cut in, anger flaring, but Hermione held up one hand, imperious, and he stopped in surprise.  
  
“So much older than you,” she said. “Couples like that have a lot of troubles in general. Also, some people have a problem with … you know …” She reddened, but forged ahead. “Gay couples. You being who you are, and he being who he is, will only magnify those problems.”  
  
“We’re not telling you what to do, mate,” Ron said.   
  
“We just want you to be careful,” Hermione added.  
  
“You don’t even believe he l-loves me, do you?” Harry blurted.  
  
Hermione gave him a level stare. “Do you?”   
  
Harry forced a smirk, though his stomach sank. “It sure feels like it.” The words were hollow even to him.  
  
“Ew!” Ron groaned. “Too much information.”  
  
“Stop it,” Harry snapped. “Stop acting like a five-year-old! Christ, Ron, when will you grow up?” Though his anger was loosed at Ron, he knew it was caused by Hermione, by that one dagger-sharp question he had no answer for.  
  
“If he makes you happy,” Hermione asked, “why are you so angry and withdrawn all the time now?”  
  
Harry met her defiant glare. “Because he’s not with me now, Hermione.”  
  
“That’s not our fault,” Ron said.   
  
“Did I say it was?”  
  
“You act like it,” Ron said. “You act like we’re the bad guys here.”  
  
“My  _friends,”_  Harry said pointedly, “are supposed to support me. Not question me and doubt me and treat me like I’m stupid.”  
  
“Friends are supposed to look out for one another,” Hermione snipped. “They’re also supposed to talk to one another and trust one another. When you decide you want to start being our friend again, p’raps you could let us know?” She spun around, glancing at Ron.  
  
“Ronald?”  
  
He looked at Harry, back at Hermione. “In a minute, all right?”  
  
She marched to the common room door without a backward glance.  
  
After it thudded shut, Harry turned his stare to Ron, who sighed and sat across from him. Harry gave up any idea of finishing his letter just then.   
  
“Look, mate, I know I’ve been ... I haven’t been a very good friend about all this Snape business.”  
  
Harry felt his anger cool a few degrees. “I understand.”  
  
“Hermione’s worried about you. She’s like a mum-in-training, sometimes.” Ron shrugged.  
  
“That’s for sure.”  
  
“But she doesn’t hate Snape or anything. She’s just a worrier.”  
  
Harry said, “You hate him, though, don’t you?”  
  
Ron looked around the room, considering. “Nah. I don’t hate him. I think – sorry, Harry – I think he’s mean. And unfair.”  
  
“He is,” Harry admitted in a small voice.  
  
“But I don’t hate him. It’s just all too weird.” Suddenly Ron peered hard at Harry, earnest. “But I mean, I don’t want to be one of those prats who can’t handle something just because it’s not what I’m used to, you know?”  
  
Harry smiled.   
  
“I just want you to know that when I ... you know, make jokes and faces and all that, that I really don’t mean it. I know you’re not stupid, and I know you wouldn’t be with him if you didn’t want to be. So ... even though it’s weird to me, I want you to know I’m trying my best to understand and be all right with it.”  
  
This time Harry’s smile was genuine. “Thanks, Ron. I know it’s weird. Believe me. But it’s real. He’s �– ”  _Everything._  But that sounded too cornball. This was Ron, after all. “He’s very important to me.”  
  
“I know.” Ron got up. “Go ahead, mate, finish your letter.”  
  
“I’ll see you both at Hagrid’s later,” Harry said, picking up his quill again. “And Ron?”  
  
At the door, Ron paused.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
  
  
 _Dear Severus;  
  
I want to ask your advice about an ethical question.  
  
Now that you’re done laughing. I’m serious.  
  
Professor Kirkcaldy is reluctant to teach us some of the more advanced curses we’re reading about. We’ve hit a kind of a comprehension block. A lot of the seventh years think they need to know them. I think I’m right that you and I agree on this subject. They’ve asked me to teach them, to sort of reinstate Dumbledore’s Army for this purpose.  
  
Obviously I’m not going to ask Dumbledore’s permission, although I also think he’ll know about it sooner or later if I start teaching again. If he stops us, he stops us, and if he doesn’t, that’s even better.  
  
Even though I agree that we need to know these things, I’m not sure I’m up to teaching them. That’s why I’m asking you what you think. Is it a stupid idea or not? If you think I should go ahead and do it, do you have any suggestions that might make it go better or be less risky?  
  
I’ve applied to Cairo and London; just under the wire, I think, but I had a hard time deciding to do it. None of the other unis seem very promising, really. I still don’t know what I’ll decide if they accept me, though. I hope you and I can talk about it once school’s done.  
  
I know you won’t come to the end-of-year celebrations, but there’s a Hogsmeade weekend in March._  
  
  
  
Harry paused, twitching the end of his quill irritably across his chin, back and forth, as he tried to think of a way to say it that wouldn’t be hopelessly pathetic. Somehow, he didn’t think please, please come, I miss you so much would impress Severus with his maturity.  
  
  
  
 _I know you’re busy, and if you can’t come, or don’t want to, I understand, but I really would like to see you, if you can make it. I’ll be at the Hogs Head at noon March 13. I’ll have a book to read, so I can wait a bit, in case you want to come, but can’t be there right at noon. If not, no worries._  
  
  
  
There. That sounded honest but rational.  
  
  
  
 _Love, Harry_  
  
  
  
He looked at his signature until it blurred. It wasn’t rational, but it was honest.   
  
Harry sighed and sealed the letter.  
  


* * *

  
  
Hedwig swooped in the window with a hoot of greeting as Snape was putting the finishing touches on his latest commission – namely a sprinkling of powdered silver over the top of the still-boiling glamour potion.   
  
He raised a palm to ward her off; the potion was delicate and the last thing he needed was a jostled table or a feather in the mix. She landed on the owl stand and exchanged a look with Scratch, lying in Snape’s chair as he always did the second Snape vacated it, no matter how briefly.  
  
Snape worked on, conscious of the percentage of his income the stuff under his hands represented. He had wondered for some time about the identity of this patron. The man – so Snape assumed based on a number of indirect clues – was wealthy, uncommunicative of unnecessary detail, and perfectly willing to flout wizarding law. None of the half dozen potions he’d commissioned over the past three months – via separate and regularly spaced letters – had been simple or legal. Snape had not protested, nor pointed out to his patron, the illegality of any of the concoctions, though well aware he was an accessory to six minor crimes, to date. That  _per se_  he cared nothing for, but he did wonder.   
  
Most of his clients were one-offs. This continued patronage made him naturally curious. Many wizards were wealthy; many were careless of the law. But few were both those things  _and_  still alive and free in the wake of what Snape liked to call Harry Potter’s brief run of extraordinary good fortune.  
  
He particularly enjoyed thus describing Voldemort’s demise in front of the boy. Harry invariably played along by faking a pout. They both skirted the uneasy knowledge of the part luck had played. Some day, perhaps, when time had troweled more years over that wound, they might discuss it.  
  
 _Fool. Now you are thinking in terms of years?_  
  
Despite his rational certainty that Harry would not stay with him, when Snape considered the future with his heart, Harry was always there. That hurt, needle-sharp, because he knew it could not be true.  
  
With a soft pop Dobby appeared on the other side of the cauldron, a bundle of reddish candles under his arm and a questioning expression on his lumpy face.  
  
“New candles, as professor sir is ordering.”  
  
Snape nodded at the house elf to proceed, then doused the small fire under his latest concoction and slid the lid over the cauldron, aware peripherally of Dobby darting around the room plucking out the old deformed stubs from the various sconces and replacing them with fresh candles, which he lit as he went.  
  
Snape went to his desk and shoved Scratch to the floor, then fussed for a moment, moving quills and paper and notes that didn’t in the least require moving. Finally he reached up and unfastened the letter from the leg of the patiently waiting snowy owl, sliding it with false casualness to the bottom of his thin stack of commissions. Hedwig hooted as if to say she wasn’t fooled, and he tossed her an owl treat which she neatly caught.  
  
“Show off,” Snape muttered, fiddling with the pile of commissions. “Just like your master.”  
  
She gulped her treat and hooted again, and Scratch meowed irritably at her.  
  
Snape drew a freshly loaded candlestick nearer and lit it, wrinkling his nose at the puff of smoke as the flame flicked upward.  
  
“What are these made of?” he asked.  
  
Dobby paused. “Dobby is making them the usual way, professor sir. Dobby collects the old wax from around the castle and—”  
  
“Yes, yes.” Snape waved away the explanation. “I’m aware of how it’s done.”  
  
“Is there being something wrong with them, professor sir? You is not wanting me to buy new ones, so I is doing the best I can, but –”  
  
“They’re fine,” Snape said, bending back over his work and cursing the flush of shame at being reminded by a house elf of his poverty. “They simply smell odd. The sealing wax, I suppose. You may go.”  
  
Dobby cast a dismayed glance at his unfinished work – a single candelabrum next to a bookcase – darted over to replace its lumps of wax, then disappeared with a quiet crack.  
  
Snape scanned two commission requests – pedestrian, promising low effort and low pay – before giving up and sliding Harry’s thin letter from underneath. His chest tightened as he slit it open and spread it on his desk. Scratch jumped up and lay partly atop the letter, purring, idly kneading Snape’s left hand. He read slowly, feeling the tightness ease, replaced by an inexplicable warmth he would have admitted to no one, particularly not the impossible brat whose idiotic letter had caused it.   
  


* * *

  
  
Professor Kirkcaldy set her wand on the podium.  
  
“Wandless magic.”  
  
The quiet hum of chatter ceased and she smiled out at the class of seventh-year Gryffindors and Slytherins.  
  
“Have any of you ever performed magic without your wands?”  
  
The room stirred, but no hands were raised. Harry looked out over the class of NEWT-level students and found it difficult to believe not one of them had ever performed wandless magic. Considering recent events, though, he didn’t find it that difficult to believe that those who  _had_  didn’t want it known.  
  
“Mr. Potter, would you assist me please?”  
  
Harry slid out of his seat and strolled to the front of the room, hearing but ignoring the mocking mutterings of Crabbe and Goyle as he passed. He stopped next to Professor Kirkcaldy, hands clasped behind his back, and waited.  
  
She turned to face him. He did the same, and they stepped back from one another by silent consent until they were about 10 feet apart.  
  
Professor Kirkcaldy raised one clenched hand, without fuss, and shouted,  _“Icto!”_  A humming mass of hard air rushed toward him.  
  
Harry raised his hands.  _“Obstaro!”_  A shield, a convex whirl of red light, sprang up in front of him. The professor’s spell bounced off, hit the wall behind her desk with a thud, and disintegrated.  
  
When the oohs and ahs died down, Professor Kirkcaldy said, “You notice that wandless magic, at its most basic level, is … well, basic. I cast a simple percussive spell, the magical equivalent to a thrown punch. Harry cast up a simple shield. The more complex charms generally require a wand for focus – focus of mind and power. A spell of the complexity used to destroy Voldemort is rarely possible without a wand.” She looked at Harry. “Am I correct in thinking that you created the spell, Harry?”  
  
“Pro—” Harry cleared his throat. “Professor Snape created it.” He couldn’t help glancing at the class. Crabbe and Goyle, on either side of Malfoy, leaned behind his stiff back to mutter to one another, but Draco stared at Harry, his expression fixed, cold.  
  
“I stand corrected,” Professor Kirkcaldy said. “However, my point is that simple and basic spells are easiest to perform without a wand. Often talented children perform vague sorts of magic unintentionally before they are trained. Adult wandless magic is a refined version of that very expression of power.”  
  
“Professor?”  
  
“Yes, Miss Patil?”  
  
“Do we need to know this for our NEWTS?”  
  
Professor Kirkcaldy smiled. “No. This is somewhat outside the scope of even the NEWTs. However, if I’m not mistaken many of you hope to become Aurors, is that not correct?”  
  
She listened to the murmur of agreement. “Therefore I’d like to give you a taste of some of the things you may be facing as Aurors.”  
  
“But V—Voldemort’s dead,” Neville said, flushing.  
  
“Voldemort wasn’t the only evil wizard in the world,” Harry said. Then looked at Professor Kirkcaldy, slightly abashed at having spoken out of turn.  
  
“Mr. Potter is quite correct, though I don’t wish to give you an unnecessarily gloomy outlook on the world. If you wish to become Aurors, however, you will spend your careers dealing with that section of our society. And there are some … unconventional skills that may help you.”  
  
She let the hum of approval die down and added, “I won’t be giving you intensive training in wandless magic, just a few castings to give you the feel for it and find out if any of you – aside from Mr. Potter – have a special affinity for it. If you do, you should cultivate it. Now, who wants to try it next?”  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry collected his things and left the classroom, waiting in the corridor, one hand on his bookbag where Severus’ letter rested, as if he could gain guidance through the leather by osmosis. Silly, since he’d memorized the thing already, both the brief advice on extracurricular training and the gaping absence of any reference to his invitation to Hogsmeade.   
  
Harry briefly closed his eyes and silently told his insides, for the dozenth time, not to make too big a deal out of it.   
  
As the other students filed out, one or another would linger in the hall, glancing at Harry before moving a little away to gaze at a book or riffle through notes.  
  
He gave a guarded nod to Neville, hovering by the window with Padma Patil, and looked back into the classroom. Ron and Hermione stood just inside the door, heads together, talking, and something tickled in Harry’s throat. The tickle turned acid when they both peeked at him and exchanged a few more words.  
  
Harry shook his head mentally. Prat. Now he was thinking Ron and Hermione were plotting against him? True, they weren’t as close as they had been, but …  
  
But nothing. Harry looked at the floor. They weren’t as close, and they were never going to be. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault.  
  
That didn’t make it stop hurting.  
  
He remembered Severus saying  _everything hurts, Potter,_  and for some reason it made him smile.  
  
Finally Professor Kirkcaldy shooed Ron and Hermione out and closed the door, saying goodbye to Harry before striding off down the hall. As she went, the other seventh-years who’d been loitering moved closer to Harry.  
  
“Well?” Dean said. “What’d you decide?”  
  
  
  
 _Rather than do your thinking for you,_  Severus had written,  _permit me to list the salient Muggle cliches: Knowledge is power; practice makes perfect; the Lord helps those who help themselves; I would rather fight a thousand fools than have one on my side. Does that help?_  
  
  
  
Smiling, Harry patted his bookbag and said, “I think it’s time for a special study group. A  _practical_  study group.”  
  
A moment of silent group consideration ended in several solemn nods.  
  
“Someplace safe,” Neville said.  
  
“The Room of Requirement?” Luna suggested.  
  
“Dumbledore will know,” Harry put in, not meaning to necessarily disagree.  
  
“He’ll know eventually anyway,” Hermione said.  
  
Harry nodded. He’d been pondering this for a while. “We could meet in the Chamber of Secrets.” He didn’t have to look at the faces around him to know that wasn’t a welcome suggestion. “But it’s a long trudge for something we’re going to have to squeeze into our usual schedules.”  
  
He sensed the mental sighs of relief and went on, “We could try to find a spot in the forest … maybe Hagrid could suggest a place that’s safe.”  
  
“Hagrid’s definition of safe doesn’t inspire me with much confidence, mate,” Ron put in, and Harry grinned ruefully.  
  
“I know, but it’d keep us out from under Dumbledore’s eye for a bit.”  
  
“Why do we need to hide this from Dumbledore again?” Parvati asked.  
  
Harry tried to be fair past his lingering anger at the headmaster. “Well, perhaps we don’t have to. He might let us go ahead, now the Ministry’s watchdog isn’t here to be offended.” He glanced at the ten faces around him, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, awaiting his decision. He sighed.  
  
“Well, let’s go with the Room for now. If we have to, we can always disband and start again someplace else.”  
  
“When shall we start?” Hermione, ever practical, put in. “This weekend?”  
  
The others groaned.   
  
“Only you would want to work on a weekend,” Ron complained.  
  
“Next week, then,” she pressed, undaunted. “Monday evening?”  
  
They set a time and prepared to scatter to their next classes.  
  
Neville hovered a moment longer to say, “Thanks, Harry. I really want to do this.”  
  
Harry gave him a smile. “No problem, Neville. It’ll be good for all of us.”  
  
“Come on,” Hermione said. “We’re going to be late for arithmancy.”  
  
She marched ahead. Harry and Ron exchanged a lock of mock disgust and started to follow her.  
  
A body thumped into Harry’s back, hard, and he bumped into the wall, spinning to see Draco’s sneering smile near his face. Crabbe and Goyle stood back, blocking Ron from getting closer. Hermione stopped and turned around.  
  
“Watch where you’re going, Potter,” Draco snarled.  
  
Harry snapped,  _”Affigero.”_  
  
Draco’s sneer widened to an O of surprise as he was lifted, spun, and spreadeagled against the wall.  
  
Stomach churning, Harry leaned up close and said into Draco’s ear, “If you don’t want to end up like your father, don’t push me.” He backed off to allow Draco to see the resolve on his face, then turned, shoved past Crabbe and Goyle, and walked away, flanked by a stunned Ron and Hermione.   
  
The spell dissipated and Draco hit the floor. Harry glanced back to see Crabbe and Goyle lift him to his feet. Draco cast a strange, smirking glare at him, then whirled and strode away, thugs in tow, before Harry could figure out what, besides hatred, he had seen in that look.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry sat in a corner booth, as far from the door as possible while still keeping it in view, and ordered a whisky when the waitress swooped past. The sort of place he was in was evident in the fact that she looked at his face, looked at his money, and decided if he was rich enough to buy it, he was old enough to drink it.  
  
He had some bad associations with the Hog’s Head, but it was the only pub with rooms – not that they could have met at the Three Broomsticks anyway. There was no chance of anonymity on that side of town.  
  
He opened his book and commenced staring blankly at page after page.  
  
They’d had a few good practice sessions in the Room of Requirement so far; even Neville had shown more poise and focus than Harry would have expected, and he felt surprisingly … adult teaching his friends some of the things Severus had taught him. It bothered him that there were no Slytherins, though. That entire House, now under the leadership of the competent, chilly Professor Sinistra, seemed even more separate than before from the rest of Hogwarts. The destruction of Voldemort and several Slytherins’ parents had had a natural dampening effect, but Harry suspected Draco’s influence as well.  
  
Malfoy’s behavior had changed. Not surprisingly, really, but the cold silence that had replaced his regularly scheduled taunts made the back of Harry’s neck prickle when he thought about it. The closest Draco had come to any kind of confrontation was when he’d deliberately bumped into Harry a few weeks back. Pointless, idiotic – why the hell had he done it?  
  
Harry sighed and sat back, tasting the fiery whisky. Who knew why Slytherins did any of the things they did?  
  
And that thought brought him full circle back to Severus. As it seemed every thought did, these days. He turned the page and continued to stare blankly, willing the chant in his brain –  _please come, he won’t come, please come, he won’t come_  – to shut up.  
  
Two hours past the appointed time, Harry sighed, squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, collected his book and slid out of the booth, weaving his way carefully among the tables toward the door.   
  
He knew Severus had a lot of work to do. He knew Severus didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He knew Severus probably didn’t miss him, probably didn’t even think about him when they were apart—  
  
 _“Finally,”_  came the black-velvet voice, just behind him, and he jumped and turned. The curtain on the tiny cloak room under the stairs swirled aside and Severus slipped out, the same as ever, pale and thin and black-clad and eyeing him with mild amusement.  
  
Harry felt the blush flash through his body, his heart stuttering into double time.  
  
“While I am touched by the inordinate length of time you are prepared to wait in hope—” He brushed by Harry gently, a teasing pass of warm air, and headed for the stairs. “—I was beginning to get stiff from standing hunched over in that ridiculous closet.” Despite his words he ascended the narrow stairs in his usual lithe glide.   
  
Harry hurried after. “It’s your own fault,” he said, still off-balance, irked and delighted.  
  
“I never suggested otherwise,” Snape said, opening a warped door at the head of the stairs to reveal a small bedchamber. Harry followed him inside, stopping in the middle of the plain, well-worn but surprisingly unfilthy chamber to watch while Snape closed, locked and warded the door, then turned to face him, almost smiling.  
  
Undone by that, Harry flung himself on Snape, arms around his neck, and kissed him with clumsy ardor.  
  
“You taste of firewhisky,” Snape said when Harry paused for oxygen. “Must you always greet me with a flying tackle?”  
  
“Enjoy it while you can. When we’re old and feeble and all I can do is kiss your cheek and squeeze your hand, you’ll miss this.”  
  
Snape blinked, his sarcastic expression gentling. “Growing old with Harry Potter.” He slid his arms around Harry’s back. “What a fantastic concept.”  
  
“We have to grow old with someone. Why not each other?”  
  
Snape shook his head. “Indeed. As we are both known for taking the most difficult paths in life, it makes perfect sense.” And at Harry’s smile, he felt, for an instant, as if it were possible.  
  
Then Harry stopped, drawing back and licking his lips, awkward. “Um. Do you want to talk? I mean … or anything?”  
  
“Whence this sudden attack of maidenly reserve?” Snape asked, amused.  
  
Harry said, “I just don’t want you to think we have to go at it like rabbits all the time.” He felt his face heat as Snape’s right eyebrow eloquently expressed skepticism. “I don’t want you to think this is just about … sex.”  
  
“Has it occurred to you how flattering it might be for a crabbed old man such as myself to be considered a sex object by a beautiful young creature such as you?”  
  
Harry regarded him thoughtfully. “That might cross your mind,” he said. “But you’re too realistic to fall for it. And you’re too … real to want it. You’d be long done with me by now if this was about your vanity.”  
  
Snape harrumphed. “So you are telling me that I apparated all this way for tea and conversation?”  
  
“As well.” Harry smiled. “But … I mean … if we can’t talk to each other … if all we do is shag…”  
  
“Quite spectacularly, too,” Snape put in drily, and Harry grinned. “Harry, have you been talking to your friends about the inappropriate nature of this situation?”  
  
“No!” Harry flushed. “Well … no.”  
  
“Then what’s made you come over all hesitant? It’s most unGryffindor – and particularly un-Harry Potter – of you to stop and think like this.”  
  
“Prat,” Harry said automatically. “I just want … I want you to take me seriously. I want you to take us seriously.”  
  
“Have I not?” Snape asked quietly, dangerously.  
  
“You have. But … oh, bollocks. I’m just trying to be sure.”  
  
“Of?”  
  
“It’s just that … I don’t love your body. I mean…” He stammered at Snape’s look. “I do. You know I do. But that’s not why I fell in love with you. It was everything else. And …” He flushed again, faltering.  
  
“So you wish to be assured that I value you for reasons other than your tight ass and hard cock?”  
  
Still red-faced, Harry met his eyes and nodded. He had a fair suspicion he sounded foolish and childish and that Severus wouldn’t spare him, so the man’s eye-roll didn’t faze him.  
  
Snape sat on the narrow, rickety sofa at the foot of the bed, regarding him with the false patience Harry knew all too well. “Must we engage in some painfully earnest conversation to reassure you of my reasonably high opinion of you, or may we take the chat as read and cut, as they say, to the chase?”  
  
Harry sighed and Snape took pity on him.   
  
“Hard as it is to believe, even I would be able to find someone to simply fuck, if simply fucking were my desire.” He leaned back on the couch, expectant.  
  
Once he understood what Snape was telling him – not for an instant had he thought Snape would say ‘I love you’ – Harry smiled tentatively. “I like it when you say fuck.”   
  
Snape blurted an involuntary laugh, then shook his head. “You astound me.”  
  


* * *

  
  
It was some effort to keep the smile off his face (an effort he rarely made as he rarely felt the need to smile) at Harry’s brilliant grin. It never failed to amaze him the evident pleasure the boy took in seeing him. All those years of animosity and distrust were erased, replaced by this … this blind, blinding affection. The sort only someone as young as Harry could ever feel.  
  
“What?” Harry prodded.  
  
Snape blinked. “I was thinking.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
The boy had a thing or two to learn about sarcasm, but he’d got a good start, Snape had to admit.  
  
“How is your Ravenclaw friend?” he asked, and Harry’s grin faltered.  
  
“Randal’s fine. I mean … we don’t talk much any more. He’s … well, it’s my fault. I made a mistake.” He shrugged and moved awkwardly toward the narrow, grimy window.  
  
“Yes, you did,” Snape agreed.  
  
“Oh, shut up.” Harry idly pulled aside a threadbare curtain – then stiffened. “What the fuck is he doing here?”  
  
Snape was behind him in a flash, peering over his shoulder to see Draco across the narrow street, looking at the Hog’s Head.  
  
Harry drew back to remain out of sight, Snape doing the same instinctively behind him. They watched as Draco turned away and strolled up the lane toward the main road.  
  
“What would Draco be doing here?” Harry said, turning to face him. Snape looked at him, prepared to deliver a scathing remark, but Harry’s expression revealed he’d answered his own question.   
  
“I expect he saw me come here,” Harry said. “Do you suppose he saw you?”  
  
Snape considered. He hated to admit it, but he hadn’t been as cautious as usual. His arrival had been circumspect, but not invisible. “Possibly.”  
  
Harry bit his lower lip, still gazing out the window though Draco had disappeared from sight. “He’s been different lately. I mean, all year.”  
  
“Does that surprise you?”  
  
Harry shook his head, still thinking. “But he’s been … quieter.” He shot Snape a knowing look. “Like he’s plotting.”  
  
“And now he’s following you.”  
  
Harry said nothing, in a particular way that made Snape say:  
  
“It was self-defense. I know that fact does not erase your ridiculously Gryffindor guilt—”  
  
“Don’t—” Harry murmured.  
  
“—but you must allow yourself to accept the exculpatory factors as you have accepted the responsibility.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. “I know it. I just wish—” The fierce words were hacked off. “I wish it was over.”  
  
Mildly Snape reminded him, “It will not be over until every witch or wizard with ties to Voldemort is dead or in Azkaban.”  
  
Harry nodded. Waited. Smiled. “Thanks.”  
  
“For?”  
  
“For not telling me to be careful.”  
  
“I shouldn’t need to,” Snape dismissed that.  
  
Harry’s grin broadened. “Yeah. But you used to do it anyway. I appreciate any indication you’ve stopped thinking of me as an idiot.”   
  
He faced the window again and Snape remained behind him. For a long moment both of them stared up the street, seeing their path together, past and future, lined with pitfalls in either direction.   
  
Snape slid his arms around Harry, resting one hand on his chest. Harry sighed and relaxed against him.  
  
In his ear, Snape said, “What was it you wished to … talk about?”  
  
Harry turned his head, pressing his face into Snape’s neck for a moment, inhaling deeply. Then he turned in Snape’s embrace and smiled at him.  
  
“Forget it. Let’s just shag like rabbits.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape tossed the owl carrying his latest overpriced love potion into the air and watched it wing its way toward the aged and no doubt unreasonably hopeful witch who’d commissioned it. As was his habit, he then tossed the request into the brazier he kept handy and watched it turn to a puff of smoke and a few flecks of ash. He liked to keep his laboratory tidy.  
  
Then, dismissing that task from his mind, he turned back to the counter and gazed on the tiny glass cauldron – so small he could not have fit his hand into it – currently resting over a single blue flame. Fueled by a golden oil of rendered dragon fat, the steady flame licked the curved underside of the cauldron in languorous caresses, gently teasing the crystal-clear fluid within to an restrained roil, just short of the boiling point. The timer on the table beside the cauldron steadily ticked away the seconds to the precise moment when the next phase should begin.  
  
Snape smiled.   
  
This. This was what he had secretly hoped for when his world had collapsed around him the previous autumn. A private laboratory in which to fashion those delicate and intricate potions, as much art as magic, which he’d never had time for as a teacher.  
  
For all his mystery, Snape’s secret patron had served him as much as he had been served. This, his latest commission –  _tenere bestingenium,_  a potion enabling the drinker to temporarily transfer his mind into the mind of any animal – was a case in point. The series of complex concoctions he’d ordered had kept Snape busy, solvent and as content as possible – far more content than he’d ever hoped to be.  
  
Not that that was saying much.  
  
Snape slid onto the stool in front of the cauldron and stared into the calm crystal depths of the potion, mulling his perverse conviction that every moment spent  _not_  thinking about Harry was a good moment.   
  
Though perhaps, he thought, good was the wrong word. Wise. Healthy. Sensible. Not good, painfully good, intensely, achingly good, so good he could not let himself believe in it or surrender to it, much as he longed to.  
  
He snorted a laugh. To think that Harry Potter, of all people, had so corrupted his definition of good. Of everything. Fucking brat. Blundering, ridiculous, all-encompassing brat.  
  
The timer dinged and Snape passed a hand over the still-roiling cauldron, speaking the spell in a careful monotone.  
  
The potion shivered and glimmered and he pinched out the flame, watching the tiny wisps of black smoke rise and dissipate …  
  
And there was something …  
  
Something … it was there, on the periphery of his senses, but he was aware of it, aware as one might be, on staring at a page filled with a jumble of letters, that a word was hidden within. Something, some pattern in these potions, in their nature and order, whispered to his subconscious.   
  
It whispered of danger.  
  
There was nothing dangerous to him in this potion, in any of them. He was not such a fool as to not consider the risks of any of his commissions, and none, not even those of his mystery patron, were beyond his experience or abilities. His wards remained up, and nothing had breached them.  
  
Still, each additional creation added to the niggling in the back of his mind that there was more to it.   
  
Snape removed the potion from the iron ring suspending it above the oil and set it aside to cool before decanting. After this, he had no urgent commissions. It was time he listened to the doubts gnawing at the back of his thoughts, time to devote his brain to analyzing his unease and pinpointing the cause. Then eliminating it. Preferably before Harry got here tomorrow morning.  
  
Refusing to let his mind drift in that more pleasant direction, Snape fetched the silver phial for the  _tenere bestingenium,_  decanted it with stone-steady hands, and sealed the phial with its silver stopper and the necessary spells.  
  
He slipped the potion into a leather bag and beckoned one of his fastest messengers, a male barn owl he liked to call Albus.  
  
“Take this with all haste to Summerisle Hall, near Brecon.”  
  
The owl took the bag and leaped into the air, soaring in silence toward the owl slit.   
  
Done. He took up the letter from his mystery patron and ran his eye over it, again seeking a pattern or a clue and finding none, seeing nothing threatening, nothing familiar, yet still sensing … something.  
  
He tossed the parchment into the brazier and it vanished in a black  _foof_  of smoke. He turned back to the counter …  
  
… and that something, cold, shivered up his spine once more.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry twirled his fork in his mashed potatoes, the fingers of his other hand drumming slowly on the table. Too many things to think about had left him unable to think at all, and the roar of voices and clatter of dinnerware around him in the Great Hall wasn’t helping. He stared at his half-eaten supper and longed for the Leaving Feast – for the whole evening of festivities – to end.   
  
Ron bumped him. “Come on, Harry. This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for. You look like you’re at a bloody funeral, not a celebration.”  
  
Harry scowled. “I know. Sorry. I’m thinking. You know.”  
  
Hermione leaned over the table to be heard. “You do have a lot to think about, but you should be excited about it. You should be proud, Harry. Getting accepted at London  _and_  Cairo—”  
  
“ _And_  the Ministry’s Auror Training Programme!” Ron said. “I can’t believe we all got in!”  
  
Hermione said, “But Harry hasn’t decided yet. Have you?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I haven’t had a minute to think about it since I got the letters. Have you decided?” Hermione, of course, had been accepted at all of the half dozen universities she’d applied to.  
  
“Ecole Magique,” she said without hesitation. “Their advanced arithmancy and transfiguration schools are the best in the world.”  
  
“Being an Auror’s best in the world,” Ron argued.  
  
“I can always become an Auror later if I decide that’s what I want,” she countered primly. “But I need a broader and deeper base of knowledge of the wizarding world before I choose a career.”  
  
“Well, I’ve chosen one,” Ron said. “Besides, I can’t afford uni. The Ministry pays while you train.”  
  
“I think you’ll make a fine Auror, Ron,” Hermione said loyally. “Your parents will be so proud. When are they coming?”  
  
“The celebration after the feast,” Ron said. “Yours too?”  
  
Hermione nodded. “They were a little overwhelmed at the idea of coming to the Leaving Feast, so I suggested they wait until everyone but the teachers and seventh-years had gone.” She shot a look at Harry, who of course had no family to come and celebrate his finishing school with him. “You don’t have to decide this minute,” she said.   
  
“I really don’t know what to do. Cairo’s so far, but it’s a better school than London, and I’m not sure I want to be an Auror – just yet.” That last Harry tacked on for Ron’s sake, since he was fairly sure by now that he didn’t want to be an Auror at all.  
  
“It’s not the only useful career,” Hermione said, as she’d said before – adding hastily, “Although it is a good choice.”  
  
Ron closed his open mouth.  
  
“I want to talk to Severus before I decide,” Harry said deliberately, feeling his friends go suddenly still.  
  
Ron recovered first, shaking his head. “I can’t get over how weird it is to hear you call him by his name.”  
  
Harry gave Ron a rueful smile. “Nor can I.”  
  
“If … if he really is … if he does care about you,” Hermione said, hesitant and priggish all at once, “he’ll encourage you to continue your education.”  
  
Harry laughed without humor. “He has. He thinks I should go to Cairo. He’s not trying to make me give up my life, Hermione.”  
  
“Hm,” she said. “Good.”  
  
“I’m the one who doesn’t want to leave him,” Harry added.  
  
“But you can’t just …” she sputtered.  
  
“Just what?” Harry snapped. “Have what I want, for once? Have a home, and someone who cares about me, for once?”  
  
“We care about you,” Hermione said gently.  
  
Harry sighed. “I know you do. I just wish you could see that … he isn’t bad for me. He’s good for me.”  
  
“Not if being with him stops you doing something with your life,” she said. “Going on with your education and—”  
  
Harry slammed his fork down, rattling his plate and glass of pumpkin juice. “It won’t! Even if I don’t go to Cairo or become an Auror or whatever everyone else wants me to do, it won’t be him deciding it. It’ll be  _me_.” He lowered his voice, leaning over the table toward his startled friends. “Why do you suddenly think I don’t know how to make my own decisions?”  
  
“You’ve never been … in love before,” Hermione said nervously. “And with someone like Professor Snape—”  
  
“Right.” Face hot, head pounding, Harry got up, shoving away from his unfinished dinner. “I’m done.” His glass tipped, spilling pumpkin juice across the table. “I’m sick and tired of defending myself to you. And him. I don’t need to and I’m not going to any more.”  
  
“Harry—” Ron began, placatingly.  
  
“No.” Harry stood back. “I’m going in to the teachers’ lounge. I’ll see you there.” He marched off, and when they didn’t call him back or come after him, he was less surprised than he’d expected, but not less hurt.  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape dipt a quill, letting it rest in the inkwell while he stared at the blank parchment, trying to decide what to say – if, indeed, he should say anything, how to phrase his vague concerns and possibly unnecessary cautions so the precipitate brat might pay attention without panicking and rushing to his aid.  
  
  
  
 _Harry_  (he’d never yet managed a ‘Dear’);  
  
 _I think it might be best if you did not come here directly upon end of term. I’m in the middle of a delicate process that I would prefer to complete without the danger of distraction. Perhaps you might impose upon your gaggle of red-headed friends for a while, or revisit the bad old days with your werewolf mentor. Inform me of your whereabouts and I shall contact you in due time.  
  
Be so good as to do me the unprecedented courtesy of obeying me in this small matter. Were it not important I should not have brought it up.  
  
  
  
Severus_  
  
  
  
He ran a quick eye over the note, dissatisfied at the realization that the more imperious he sounded, the less likely the rash idiot was to cooperate. He was also startled to feel a flicker of dismay at his own pitiless tone. Perhaps “Yours, Severus” would encourage the brat to do as he said for once …  
  
He shook his head and beckoned the sooty owl. Time spent worrying about Harry’s feelings was time wasted not figuring out whether there was indeed something wrong here.  
  
The little owl landed with a soft thud and he fastened the parchment to its leg, then considered the bird. His other owls were all out, and it wasn’t the fastest messenger. It would probably take a few hours to reach Hogwarts, but Harry wasn’t supposed to leave there until morning, so there would be time to warn him off.  
  
“Harry Potter, at Hogwarts,” Snape said, and the sooty owl took off.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry stormed out of the teachers’ lounge, slamming through the doors, hearing them hit the stone walls behind him. He strode toward the stairs, his blood pounding in his temples, rage roaring in his ears and churning in his throat.  
  
He unfastened his dress robe as he trotted up the stairs, passing several departing students, each laden with trunks and books and each giving Harry a curious glance as they descended.  
  
He snapped the password at the Fat Lady, ignoring her huff of offense, and shoved his way into the deserted common room, where he stopped, spitting out a curse.  
  
Even if he could have forgotten his friends’ doubts at dinner, the small farewell fete for the seventh-years continued on the same infuriating theme of Harry Is Too Stupid To Know What He Wants And Snape Is Controlling Him.  
  


* * *

  
  
The headmaster started it – the second remark out of his mouth, after his congratulations.  
  
“Do you plan to say your farewells to the Dursleys?” he asked, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid standing on either side of him. They looked like a trio of judges.  
  
Harry laughed. “No. I don’t plan to go anywhere near them for the rest of my life. Why?”  
  
“They did raise you, Harry,” Dumbledore said mildly.  
  
“No they didn’t. They put up with me. It’s not the same thing.” Harry glanced around the teachers’ lounge at the gleeful seventh-years and their proud families. “They don’t want to see me again, I’m sure, and I don’t want to see them. I didn’t leave anything there and I have no intention of going back.”  
  
“Where are you going to go for the summer?” McGonagall said. “The Weasleys’?”  
  
Dumbledore started to speak but Harry overrode him.  
  
“I’m going to Severus.”  
  
Hagrid blushed red as pickled beets. McGonagall blinked, as if having trouble recognizing the name. “Severus?”  
  
“Snape.” Harry kept his tone matter of fact. “Professor Snape. The man who invented the spell that destroyed Voldemort. The man who taught me how to use it. The man who seems to be the only person in my life who lets me make my own decisions.” He cocked his head at Professor McGonagall. “Professor Snape.”  
  
In the speculative silence that followed, he scanned the crowd, seeing the Weasleys and Hermione’s folks, Dean’s parents, Seamus’ mum, Neville’s grandmother … others he had heard about but never met: Luna’s father, with a wizard photographer trailing him about the room, the Patil sisters’ parents, Justin Finch-Fletchley’s mum and dad.  
  
And, separated a little from the rest as if loath to risk rubbing elbows with halfbreeds and mudbloods, the little clutch of Slytherins.  
  
Draco wasn’t here, of course. No one with known Death Eater relatives had stayed past the Leaving Feast, and the Slytherins who remained were obviously uncomfortable with their perceived proximity to the fallen enemy.  
  
But Harry could still hear Draco’s passing words to him after their last class together.  
  
“Say hello to your traitor lover for me, Potter.”   
  
And in the time it took Harry to bite back a hex, Draco had disappeared.  
  
“Harry…” Professor McGonagall began, and Harry blinked, looking at her with as much politeness as he could muster. “Don’t you think…”  
  
Harry swallowed the anger swelling in his throat as Arthur and Molly came over, Ron in tow, to offer Harry handshakes and hugs and congratulations. Their genuine warmth eased his anger, but not the tension buzzing in his stomach.  
  
“They’re all grown up,” Arthur said, beaming, including Ron and Hermione and all the others with a broad sweep of his arm. “All grown up and on their way into the wide world.”  
  
Molly sniffled and Arthur put his arm around her shoulders.  
  
“They are grown up,” Professor McGonagall said tightly. “Mostly. But they still need our guidance and help.”  
  
“Oh,” Arthur said, caught a bit off-guard by McGonagall’s tone. “To be sure. I only meant…”  
  
“Have you decided where to attend university, Harry?” Molly asked. Harry glanced at Ron’s worried face before answering.  
  
“I haven’t yet, Mrs. Weasley. I’ve been accepted at London and Cairo, but I haven’t committed anywhere yet.”  
  
“Always thought you’d go pro, Harry,” Arthur said, grinning at him. “You’re a genius on the Quidditch pitch.”  
  
Harry forced a smile, mentally shaking his head. They still thought of him as a crazy little kid on a broom. “I don’t think that’s the career for me, sir.”   
  
“Where will you spend the summer, Harry?” Molly asked. “You know you’re welcome to stay with us at any time, for as long as you like.”  
  
“Thank you, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry said, clearly, over the muffled sounds coming from Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid. His stomach was hot, simmering, but he kept his voice even. “But I’m going to Castle Snape in the morning.”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes and looked away. His parents leveled identical looks of benevolent horror on Harry.  
  
“You…” Arthur began.  
  
“Harry…” Molly said. Neither of them found the words to continue.  
  
Hagrid, wringing his huge hands, said, “We only want what’s best fer ya, ’arry, you know that.”  
  
“I know it,” Harry said tightly. “But wanting what’s best for me and knowing what’s best for me aren’t the same thing, are they?”  
  
“Harry,” Dumbledore said, in that calm and gentle tone that for some reason angered Harry more than any yelling or screaming. “Are you quite certain that you see the situation clearly? That you aren’t … reacting … to past traumatic events rather than thinking clearly?”  
  
Harry clenched his jaw. After a moment he said through his teeth, “It doesn’t matter what I say. Sir. You’ve already decided what you think about me and him.”  
  
“It might do you good to be …” Molly began, then stopped herself, her hands twisting together as Hagrid’s had done.  
  
Firmly Arthur finished her sentence, “Away from Severus for a while.”  
  
“To see the world,” Dumbledore put in.  
  
“To learn more,” McGonagall added.  
  
“To grow up a little more,” Molly said, and Harry blew his stack.  
  
“You know,” he said loudly, “you’re right. You’re all right. I should grow up. I should start making my own decisions, instead of letting everyone else in the world make them for me—”  
  
Hagrid flinched, reaching out hesitantly. “Harry—”  
  
“—instead of letting other people tell me it’s not okay that I’m happy, that it’s bad that I have someone who cares about me.” He inhaled, feeling himself shaking. “Well, I think I am going to make my own decisions. Starting right now. Thank you all for everything. And good-bye.”  
  
He spun away from the circle of shocked adult faces, shaking with fury, boiling with all the things he wanted to yell at them for being so damned stupid, so determined that they knew better than he did about his own damned life.  
  
“’arry!”  
  
He heard Hagrid’s concerned call but didn’t hesitate. He’d had enough of all of them.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry left the Gryffindor common room, ascended to the seventh-years’ dormitory and flung his dress robes into his trunk, leaving him in trainers, jeans – and a Weasley sweater. He stood rigid, fighting his anger, trying to remind himself that these people cared about him, however badly they were showing it.  
  
Hedwig hooted worriedly at him and he took a deep, slow breath.  
  
He stared through her for a moment before calming enough to say, “I’m all right.” He snarled out loud, grabbed a quill and a piece of scrap parchment, and scribbled a short note: “I’m sorry; I’ll be in touch. –H.” It wasn’t much, but it was the best apology Harry could honestly muster right now. The Weasleys ought to be home by the time Hedwig got there.  
  
He tied the short note to Hedwig’s leg and said, “The Burrow. Meet me at – at home after.” The word burned warm and incredible in his stomach.  _Home._  
  
He closed, locked and shrank his trunk, stuck it in his jeans pocket, and grabbed his broom. He could shrink it, too, and apparate to the castle, now that Snape had reset the warding to allow him entrance, but it was a fine night and he was in the mood for a fast, fierce, brain-scouring flight. He’d get there the better for it, calmed as flying always calmed him.  
  
Hedwig flew off with a hoot.  
  
“I’ll see you there, girl,” he called as her white wings spread across the black star-speckled sky. He threw a leg over his broom and launched himself upward.  
  
 _Whatever else happens, I’m going to be with him. I’m going home._  
  
  
  
A quarter hour later a small sooty owl arrived at Hogwarts and flew through an open window into the Gryffindor tower to find it empty and his message undeliverable.   
  


* * *

  
  
It was past midnight by the feel of the air when Harry saw the lights of Yarrow, a collection of bland white and yellow twinkles scattered along a narrow valley. The village itself held no interest for Harry except for the fact that it was his last landmark before Castle Snape; when he saw it his heart leaped in his chest. He grinned and began scanning the northern hills for those few grudging flickers from candle or torch that revealed the castle’s presence.  
  
When he spotted the castle’s outline, a deeper black against the black of the sky, he sped up, flying as though the world were chasing him and sanctuary lay within those crumbling walls.  
  
He couldn’t see the wards but he felt them wash over his skin as he descended through the brisk air to land in the courtyard. There he pulled the Firebolt from between his legs and looked around a moment, at the narrow court and the crumbling grey castle around it.  
  
Home.  
  
Still grinning, stomach churning with nervous eagerness, he trotted up the steps and pushed one of the tall doors open.  
  
“Hey,” he greeted The Mirror as he set the broom against the wall and unfastened his cloak.  
  
“Uh oh,” The Mirror said, and Harry stopped.  
  
“Uh oh? What kind of welcome is that?” He faced the Mirror, seeing – naturally – only his own wind-reddened face and raggedly tousled hair.  
  
The Mirror cleared its throat – or made the appropriate noise – but was interrupted by the sound of swiftly approaching booted feet.  
  
“Never mind.” Harry turned to greet Severus.  
  
Snape strode into the entry hall and stopped.   
  
He looked … angry. That made Harry, in turn, stop.  
  
Severus started forward again at the same urgent speed, scowling fiercely. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Puzzled, Harry put out a tentative hand – and his fingertips tingled with magic.  
  
“What…” He moved instinctively to meet Severus, and his outstretched hand was enveloped to the wrist in warm liquid bands of power. Wards – personal, powerful wards, he realized with a gut-jolt of alarm – and automatically reached out.  
  
“Don’t—” was as far as Snape got before Harry clasped his wrist.  
  
Silence struck Harry first, blunt, stunning blows against his eyes, his eardrums. He felt his senses flattened, smeared, erased.  
  
Half an indrawn breath behind it came the explosion: a swell of light and a blast of sound that made him flinch and curl in on himself. Light so bright, so hot it was pain, piercing, lancing even through his closed eyelids to flare into his brain – noise, a heavy blasting roar that beat against the sides of his skull – he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry out or resist as a wave of magic slammed him back, off his feet and tumbling.  
  
Hammered, battered, deafened and blinded, Harry spun and bounced like a boulder in an avalanche, flickering in and out of consciousness for an immeasurable time.   
  
And at the end, again, silence.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry came to on his back, on something hard, feeling as though his body had been used as a bludger in a long and brutal quidditch match. He blinked up at the hazy night sky in surprise – how had he gotten outside? – and felt the tingle of residual magic falling away from him as he sat up.  
  
“Oh my God…” The words came out in a whisper of gut-freezing shock.   
  
The castle was gone.   
  
Not gone, he realized in the next second. Leveled. Razed to the ground, to a vast field of rubble and grit, piled all around him, the dust of its collapse still rising all around like smoke. The mountaintop looked stripped, naked – raped and left to die.  
  
Panic jerked Harry to his feet. “Severus!”  
  
Even as he scrabbled for his wand to cast a seeking spell, Harry’s eyes fell on Snape, a still black shape, kneeling about 20 feet away.  
  
Harry ran toward him, seeing Snape raise his head, seeing him look dazedly around himself as Harry had done.   
  
He seemed uninjured, and Harry slowed to a walk as he got near, the panic easing its hold around his racing heart.  
  
“Severus—”  
  
Snape’s head snapped around, black eyes fixing Harry to the spot, the expression in them, even in the dimness, spearing Harry with fresh fear.  
  
Surrounded by mountains of rubble, wreathed in slowly settling clouds of dust, Severus stared at Harry, and Harry realized he was shaking.  
  
Harry took a step closer. “Severus.”  
  
“No,” Severus growled, stopping him again.   
  
Snape turned his wild stare to the ground, bending, his fingers clenching in the fragments of shattered stone. “This … is because of you.”  
  
Harry shook his head, panic rising once more. What was he saying?   
  
Snape kept his eyes on his fisted hands, but Harry could hear the words forced through clenched teeth.  
  
“You … stupid … why didn’t you  _listen_  ..?”  
  
Harry gaped, stunned, without any idea of what has happened or why, seeing only that, somehow, this was his fault. Somehow, something he’d done, maybe just coming here …  _somehow,_  he’d caused this.  
  
“No…” he whispered, his insides twisting. It couldn’t be. He tried again, pleading. “Severus—”  
  
“No!” Snape flung out his arm. “Get away.” Dirt and pebbles – shrapnel from the castle – sprayed from his hand, spattering Harry’s face like tiny hexes.  
  
Harry flinched, and Snape turned, white-faced and shaking, eyes crazed with anger, spitting the words.   
  
“Go! Get out, get out of my sight!”  
  
Harry backed off, brushing at the dust on his face with shaking hands. He looked at his palms, then at the ruins, and bitter bile roiled in his gut. Dust was all that was left.  
  
Everything Snape had –  _everything_  – was gone. And, somehow,  _he_  had caused it. The enormity of it rose in Harry’s throat, choking, strangling the words  _I’m sorry, I’m sorry…_  
  
Severus turned away, as if hearing and scorning Harry’s silent apology.  
  
Trembling, sick to his core, Harry tried futilely to steady himself, to draw air into his shriveled lungs, willing Severus to turn, to say something, anything.  
  
Finally, Harry screwed his burning eyes shut and whispered the spell for apparation.  
  


* * *

  
  
Gradually Snape realized someone – someone who was not Harry – stood waiting before him.  
  
He raised gritty eyes to the house elf, watching him with calm patience.  
  
Snape rasped out, “Why didn’t you go with him?”  
  
“Dobby is Professor sir’s house elf,” Dobby said.  
  
“I don’t  _have_  a house any more, you fool!” he snapped. “Go. Go with – go with –” His throat knotted.  _He’s gone. Gone. Harry is gone, everything is …_  
  
Dobby didn’t move. “Dobby is Professor sir’s elf. Harry Potter is wanting me to be your elf. I is being  _your_  elf.” He waited.  
  
Finally Snape climbed to his feet and looked at the vast pile of rubble. Of everything he had.  _Everything._  
  
Matter-of-fact, as if they’d just stepped off a train to begin a holiday, Dobby said, “Professor sir is needing a place to stay now. Where is we going?”  
  
Snape raised his head. With the castle destroyed, there was nothing but air between his eyes and the distant twinkling lights of Yarrow in the valley to the south. Even stunned witless, as he sensed he was, self-defense came instinctively to the fore. He needed refuge.  
  
He breathed in a sip of the cold, dust-filled air.  
  
“The village.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The village of Yarrow was long in its bed when Snape apparated to an alley across from The Empty Tun, a mixed wizard-Muggle inn on the edge of town. He stood shivering despite the mildness of the night, weighing options as Dobby popped soundlessly into being beside him.  
  
“Professor sir is ought to be taking a room,” Dobby said. “There is being a light on at the back; someone is being awake still.” He pointed and Snape quickly spoke a glamour to disguise his appearance.  
  
“Meet me in the room,” he said, not looking at the house elf, and started across the street to bang on the door.  
  
One false name and 10 very real galleons later, Snape shut the door of Room 6 behind himself, locked and warded it – then started and cursed when Dobby popped into view.  
  
“Dobby is most sorry, professor sir. Will professor sir be getting some rest now?”  
  
Snape went to the window and stared through a thin slit of open curtain into the silent street, still shaking although the room was warm. But then, he wasn’t shaking from the cold.  
  
Caught. Caught like a fool in some enemy’s trap, a trap he’d sensed being built. He’d known, he’d  _felt_  it. Yet still it’d almost killed them. If he hadn’t been warded to the teeth before Harry arrived, it would have destroyed them along with the castle. Snape shuddered, shying from the thought of how close they’d come. How close  _he’d_  come to losing—  
  
He cursed aloud. Why couldn’t the damned fool boy listen, just once, just  _one_  time in his life?   
  
 _He listened. He listened when you told him to go._  
  
“Professor sir—”  
  
“Quiet, elf. I’m thinking.” A lie. He needed to think, but this wasn’t thinking. This was wallowing, this ridiculous moping over—  
  
 _Stop. You did what you had to. There was danger, and you sent him away. Away from you.  
  
And he left.  
  
“Damn_ it.” Snape whirled away from the window and began to pace, his chest tight with anger and fear, his legs unsteady as he strode the width of the small room and stopped against the wall. He laid his palms against the rough plaster.  
  
Gone. Merlin’s beard. Everything he had – pitiful as it had been –gone. Destroyed in an instant. Granted, he had some money in Gringott’s now, thanks to his work. But … his  _home,_  his ancestral home, the home that was to be his and –  
  
 _“Stop,”_  he hissed at himself. “Damn you,  _think._  Who has done this, and why, and will they try again?”  
  
He’d been one nearly disastrous step behind this enemy for weeks now. He had to figure out what to do. If he could only clear his damned mind of the image of Harry. Harry arriving, the pleasure in his open face altering to confusion, to concern, to pain …  
  
 _Pain you caused.  
  
“Please,_ professor sir.”  
  
He turned, annoyed. “What?”  
  
His face tweaked anxiously, Dobby said, “I is being most sorry, professor sir.”   
  
The house elf pointed one knobbly finger at Snape’s face, and peaceful darkness enfolded him.  
  


* * *

  
  
Across the hall, in Room 8, a skinny old wizard with a scarred neck threw a handful of Floo powder into his tiny grate and spoke a name. In a moment the flames shot up and a pale face appeared, framed by black hair and green fire.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“The castle’s gone, sir,” the old man said. “Nothing but dust. I could see it from ’ere.”  
  
“Excellent,” Gregor said, though he didn’t smile.  
  
“But …” the old man dithered.  
  
“But what?”  
  
“But … Professor Snape’s here, sir. In the village. In the Inn. Right now.”  
  
Gregor’s face twisted in anger for an instant before smoothing into blandness.  
  
“He is alone?”  
  
“’e had a house elf with ’im, sir.”  
  
“Well. They are difficult to kill. Anyone else?”  
  
“No sir. Glamoured ’imself before ’e came in, but I saw ’im on the street. Looked a right mess, sir.”  
  
Then Gregor did smile. “Good. Then Potter must be dead. It’s a pity Severus managed to survive, although it doesn’t surprise me that he saved himself and left his boy lover to die. No matter. Potter was my main concern. Severus can wait a little.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” the old man said, although it was clear Gregor was not really speaking to him.  
  
“You’ve done well,” Gregor told him then. “Watch him and report what he does, but you need not follow if he leaves. Severus will be no problem for me now.”  
  
“Yes sir,” the old man said, but Gregor was already gone.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry smiled up at him, that eager, hungry smile that always seemed a dare, that always made Snape kiss him hard and deeply, fierce, demanding kisses that left Harry gasping and red-faced and wild with lust.  
  
Harry drew back a little, and when Snape raised his hands to his own collar, Harry reached up to push them gently away.  
  
“I want to,” he said, shy and determined. Snape had chuckled and let his own hands fall to his sides, his eyes on Harry’s flushed, focused face as the boy clumsily undid the long trail of fastenings to Snape’s coat and shirt.  
  
Awkward, Harry slid off the coat first, then the shirt, laying each in turn on the battered couch, using far more care than he ever took with his own clothes – which thought generated the smirk Harry turned back to see.  
  
“What?”  
  
Snape shook his head. “Continue.”  
  
Harry’s eyes roved over Snape’s torso, slowly, as if every pale, skinny inch of flesh were somehow beautiful to him. He brushed a hand across each flat nipple and edged around to plant a kiss – oddly – on Snape’s shoulder.  
  
“I like looking at you,” he said from behind him. “I like touching you.” His hands echoed the sentiment with gentle exploratory caresses.  
  
“So I should hope,” Snape said, hearing the purr under his words. His skin tingled and tightened under Harry’s touch, possessive yet tentative. He thought, then, that this was typical of Harry, to have something, to know that he had it, yet be unsure of what to do with it.  
  
Harry came around his other side, one hand resting just above the curve of Snape’s backside while the other spread over his bare stomach.  
  
“You’re smiling again,” he said softly. “Am I being stupid?” He pressed his face to Snape’s chest and tasted one nipple; Snape felt it stiffen under Harry’s warm tongue and drew in a suddenly urgent breath when Harry’s teeth closed delicately over the hard flesh.  
  
“On the contrary,” he said, the arousal in his voice thick enough for even Harry to hear. “You are showing an unprecedented aptitude.”  
  
His own acuity was less impressive, he had to admit, when he only realised Harry had unfastened his trousers when both the boy’s hands slid around to cup his bare arse.  
  
The last of his clothes pooled around his ankles as Harry suckled at his aching nipple. His hands fluttered up, magnetised to touch, and he whispered  _“evanesco”_  as they passed along Harry’s torso.  
  
Harry stopped nibbling to laugh. “Cheat.”  
  
“Efficient,” Snape argued automatically. Harry looked down, then up at him, his emotions as bare as his body.  
  
“Can I?” he said.  
  
Snape choked in a little, startled breath on realising what Harry meant.  
  
“I want to,” Harry added, and Snape’s blood churned, leaving him light-headed in its abrupt rush to be at Harry’s destination.  
  
The boy sank to his knees, hands curling around the backs of Snape’s thighs – thighs gone suspiciously unsteady as Harry smiled at Snape’s cock. Snape swallowed roughly and had time to think he ought to suggest a more horizontal position when Harry opened his mouth and slipped it delicately over his cock.  
  
 _“Oh…”_  Snape’s eyes drifted shut and his hands flailed automatically for balance, one finally coming to rest against the wall as Harry’s tongue glided along the underside of his erection. He forced his eyes open; it was so obviously, so exquisitely Harry’s first time doing this, Snape couldn’t breathe as he watched Harry explore, using lips and tongue and careful, eager fingers.  
  
Suddenly Harry took him in deep, and he gasped, his free hand –  _shaking?_  – cupping Harry’s tousled head, twining into his hair, fighting the need to thrust as the boy, a quick study, sucked hard and slow.  
  
Snape swayed, his body pulsing in time to the tight coaxing of Harry’s mouth.  _“Harry … god …”_  The unwanted words escaped in a moan and he clutched at Harry’s head, urging him on.   
  
But Harry stopped. Drawing back, panting, he leaned his forehead on Snape’s thigh, his fingers squeezing rhythmically around Snape’s trembling knees. “Oh, fuck…” he breathed. “I — I’m going to come…”  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape awoke with a start, disoriented, almost panicked. He was alone, he was … where?  
  
Memory hit hard, then, and he sat up with a snarl of desolated fury. Every single thing he’d lost seemed to parade before his mind, dissolving and coalescing at last into the only thing that mattered.  
  
 _Harry …_  
  
He swung his feet to the floor, jostling the rickety bedside table. The carafe of water on it wobbled and he grabbed it automatically. The sight of it, delicate and whole, clenched in his fist, made the anger surge into his throat, and he cursed and flung it across the room. It hit the wall beside the door and shattered, raining shards onto the dusty bare floor as he slumped back onto the bed, face in his hands.  
  
At the unmistakable pop of apparation he stiffened and whipped out his wand, blinking to clear his vision.  
  
“Is you all right, professor sir?” Dobby asked timidly.  
  
Snape swiftly dragged his hand across his face, coughing to ease the tightness in his throat.  
  
“Did you spell me to sleep?” he demanded.  
  
Dobby stood at the foot of the bed, wringing his hands and looking simultaneously stern and penitent.  
  
“Dobby is having to, professor sir. Professor sir was in shock. Professor sir needed to rest.”  
  
“I needed to  _think,_  you idiotic—”  
  
“You is needing to rest and eat if you is needing to think properly, professor sir,” Dobby cut in, and for a mad instant Snape was reminded of Dumbledore. “I is bringing you breakfast now you is awake, and you is able to think clearly now you is being rested.” He vanished and Snape pushed himself to his feet, going to the window.  
  
It was early morning. A few people walked or bicycled here and there, and occasionally a car passed on the main road through Yarrow as Snape stared.  
  
Though his stomach was pinched with worry and his mind still felt fogged, he forced himself to think, to methodically consider what had happened.  
  
He had no doubt, though it was due to instinct rather than facts, that his mysterious patron from Summerisle Hall was the enemy who had so subtly planted the destructive spell. He had no idea of the details of the spell, but that was less important than finding the man who’d created it. It was possible his enemy thought he’d been killed in the explosion, in which case he could investigate unimpeded. But Snape knew that had he been the attacker he would assume nothing; the possibility of monitoring, whether via spy or spell, had to be considered. There was no such spell on him or near him – no former Death Eater worthy of the name failed to be constantly vigilant about such things – but other means, subtle as the spell that had leveled the castle, might be employed.  
  
He had been careless last night –  _stupid, insane_  – but the only way to know, now, if he was being followed was to move. He had two options as to direction: he could return to what was left of his home and try to trace the spell that way, or he could apparate to Wales and see what he might learn at Summerisle Hall.  
  
His gut pushed him toward a third direction – but that was not an option at this time. Harry was safer away from him. It was sheer luck Harry had been near enough to him to be protected within Snape’s wards when the castle had been destroyed. Until he found and dealt with this enemy, it was best that they have no contact.  
  
Dobby reappeared with a breakfast tray, complete with the Daily Prophet. He set the lot on a small table in the center of the room and Snape gulped two cups of black coffee and unfolded the paper.  
  
  
  


SNAPE CASTLE GONE!

 

Ancient landmark disappears overnight

 

Locals report hearing collapse of Snape ancestral home

 

in wee hours; Severus Snape’s whereabouts unknown.

  
  
  
  
Unsurprisingly, there were few details and no mention of Harry. He had to have come more or less directly from the Leaving Feast. Although knowing the careless brat he’d probably shouted out to the lot of them where he was going, between then and now the Prophet’s reporters would have had little time to learn what most of Hogwarts probably already knew: That Harry was coming to live with –   
  
Realization pierced Snape’s chest, flooding him with fear, clearing his head for what felt like the first time in days.  
  
Draco, bumping needlessly into Harry at Hogwarts. Draco, following Harry to Hogsmeade. Draco, who knew Harry had slain his father. And knew Harry would be coming to Castle Snape after school ended.   
  
And the spell that had destroyed the castle – activated when Harry had touched him. It wasn’t chance that they’d been in physical contact when the spell had struck – it was that contact which had  _triggered_  it.  
  
“Damn it—” Snape shot to his feet, flinging the newspaper aside. Harry. It was Harry.   
  
Rage and hot panic surged in him, and he fought it down.  
  
 _“Think,_  damn you.” Where would Harry go? Frightened, confused, sent away  _(you abandoned him, fool, left him alone)_  – where would he go?  
  
“Elf!” he snapped. Dobby appeared instantly.  
  
“We’re going to Ottery St. Catchpole,” he said. Dobby blinked at him. “Now.”  
  
“Yes sir,” Dobby said, and vanished. Snape apparated a second later.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
The Weasleys were sitting down to breakfast, red-eyed but content after a late night celebrating Ron’s leaving Hogwarts, when the front doorbell rang.  
  
Arthur, Molly, Ron, the twins and Ginny all looked at one another blankly. No one ever used the front door. Ginny, closest, jumped out of her seat.  
  
“I’ll get it.”  
  
The family waited politely, sipping juice and trying to wake up, hearing a faint brief hum of speech from the front room before Ginny hurried back into the kitchen, her face white.  
  
“It’s …P-professor Snape.” She looked at Molly. “He wants to talk to you, mum.”  
  
Ron leaped out of his chair and dashed into the front room. Molly rose more sedately and followed, while Arthur hmmmed and opened his morning paper over his bacon and eggs.  
  
Snape stood framed in their doorway, stiff, hands at his sides, not stepping across the threshold. His face was pale, his eyes shadowed, his hair lanker and greasier than ever.  
  
He looked at Ron, then at Molly – who felt her heart lurch at the expression on his face.  
  
“He … Harry is not here?” Snape said.  
  
“No.” Molly came closer, alarmed. “Harry isn’t here.”  
  
“What’s happened?” Ron shouted. “What’ve you done?”  
  
“Ron!” Molly cut in, and he turned on her, red-faced and belligerent.  
  
“Mum! He—”  
  
 _“Ronald.”_  Her tone stopped him like a slap, though his hands curled into fists.  
  
“Professor,” Molly said. “What’s happened?”  
  
“Have you heard from him,” Snape hissed, a demand rather than a question.  
  
“A note last night, saying he would see us soon. Nothing else. Why?”  
  
Snape inhaled sharply and shook his head; at the fierce dismay on his face – more proof than she’d wanted of his feelings – Molly almost reached out to comfort him.  
  
“Please, Severus,” she tried again. “What’s wrong? Is Harry in danger?”  
  
He shook his head again, clearly seeing, not her, but the list of places Harry might’ve gone.   
  
Hesitant, she touched his wrist and his eyes darted to her.  
  
“If he comes …” He reached toward her, his insistence somehow becoming entreaty. “Keep him here. Keep him safe.”  
  
Holding his desperate stare, trying to understand, Molly finally said:  
  
“Yes.”  
  
He spun about, vanishing to the crack of apparation.  
  
“Dear…” Arthur came out of the kitchen, brow furrowed. “Have you seen this?” He held out the morning’s Daily Prophet.  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape strode along one of the narrower and less filthy byways of Knockturn Alley, stepping over piles of refuse and keeping one hand on his wand. His tired eyes darted constantly, seeking an address among oft-unlabeled buildings and simultaneously watching out for the usual dangers of Knockturn. Even in the daytime the area had a kind of furtive bustle; when he stopped at a crooked intersection, briefly unsure of his way, a witch and a wizard instantly approached from opposite sides, each easing out of a shadowy nook, grimy hands reaching, greedy eyes locked on him, ready to demand or plead or take.  
  
Snape brushed them off with a snarl and climbed half a dozen crumbling steps rising between two filthy brick walls. The passage opened out onto a broader lane of shops with apartments above them. Feet and heart beat a faster tattoo as he scanned the faded numbers until he reached 71, little more than 3 streaks of old paint on a piece of cracked wood, nailed haphazardly over a door that matched.  
  
It squeaked open onto a narrow, dimlit flight of steps and the strong scent of sweat, cats and cheap illusion charms. He climbed swiftly and all but ran along the bare-floored corridor until he reached a grey door boasting the shadow of a numeral – 8 – where a brass fixture had once hung.  
  
Snape knocked. Waited.  
  
Knocked again. Waited.  
  
Then he pounded.   
  
Then he snarled, drew breath of the thick air, and shouted, “Lupin!”  
  
He pounded again, more in frustration than hope of an answer, then whipped out his wand and spelled the door open –  _Defence Against the Dark Arts my arse; a child could get past these wards_  – striding into a tidy, dingy, very small flat. It took him 10 seconds to determine no one was home.  
  
He left, cursing, and slammed the door behind him.  
  
A door across the hall opened. A short, pudgy, elderly witch with wispy hair and yellow eyes looked him up and down, rubbing one hand over the protruding front of her stained brown robes.  
  
“’e’s out,” she said. “Went out this morning.”  
  
“Alone?” Snape barked before he could stop himself.  
  
Her eyebrows crept up. “Course. ’e lives alone, don’t ’e?” She sniffled. “Everyone ’ere’s alone, ain’t they?”  
  
Snape marched past her, hearing her door shut as he reached the stairs. Fear burned low in his stomach. Where in  _hell_  could the brat have got to? He was sure Harry would have turned to Lupin if he had decided against the smothering sympathy of the Weasley clan. Though he’d sent Dobby there on the slightest of chances, Hogwarts was really out of the question; Harry hadn’t thought of the school as sanctuary, nor of Dumbledore as his protector, for many months. Harry might trust Hagrid to help, but he would know he couldn’t trust Hagrid not to tell the headmaster, whom the half-giant still worshiped.  
  
The Grangers? They were Muggles. Kindly, but would Harry go to them when distressed?   
  
Disgust lurched in his chest.  _Distressed, disturbed, alone – you’ve been wonderful for the boy, haven’t you? Albus was right – they were all right. Your existence is a disaster, and you’ve drawn Harry down with you—_  
  
Snape slapped the door open with a snarl and strode into the daylight. Unlikely as it might be, he had to at least try Granger’s family, if he could recall where they lived. Or ask. Flourish & Blott’s might have their address on record; the girl was an inveterate bookworm.  
  
Snape descended the narrow stair and again paused in the unsavory intersection, calculating the swiftest route to Diagon Alley. When a dwarf in tattered red robes approached, hand out, muttering the standard wheedling cant of beggars, he waved him away with barely a glance.  
  
The dwarf stopped; his other hand extended from his robes holding a silvery globe, which he flung to the ground at Snape’s feet, spinning away even as the globe shattered.  
  
Snape mentally damned his own carelessness as the curse exploded.  
  
Black, blinding pain stabbed at him, icy, then burning, and he had an instant – to recognize the curse and speak half the countercurse – before agony sucked his voice and thoughts into oblivion. He fell, barely feeling the hard cobbles against palms and knees, the curse screaming in his ears and along his nerves. His vision became a kaleidoscope, too bright, stabbing at his brain. He ducked his head against the lights and cast about wildly, desperate for help, cover, anything.  
  
His blurry eyes found a space of darkness and he lurched toward it on instinct. He crawled, all over burning pain, senses crazed with pain, toward the dark until he was within it and it surrounded him, covering him, and his eyes teared at the relief from light.  
  
When something stopped his body – a wall, a door, he didn’t know – he collapsed, curled in on himself, and let the pain take him.  
  


* * *

  
  
Grumbling mildly about spring thunderstorms, Lupin unlocked the door to his flat and wearily shoved his rain-soaked self into the tiny front hall. Shopping was rather an ordeal on the best days, what with having to scour Diagon and Knockturn Alleys for places that either didn’t know he was a werewolf or would sell to a known werewolf without charging an arm and a leg. Carefully locking the door behind him, he deposited the small damp bag containing his meagre purchases on the kitchen counter and passed through to his sitting room.  
  
There was a fire going in his small grate, and in the shabby chair in front of it Harry Potter sat curled, feet up, knees to his chin and arms wrapped tight around them, his white face turned toward the flames.  
  
“Harry!”  
  
The boy started and turned to look at him, wet hair hanging in draggled locks around pinched eyes.  
  
“Harry—” Lupin advanced on him. “What on Earth has happened to you?”  
  
Harry blinked and shifted, and Lupin realized he was shaking despite the warmth in the room.  
  
“Remus,” he said, his voice faraway. “I’m sorry. You weren’t here. I couldn’t … I’m sorry I just came in.”  
  
“Harry.” Lupin knelt beside the chair. “What has happened? Are you hurt?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “No. It’s –” He shuddered and pressed his forehead into his knees, fingers clenching; the fire flared and spat, flames shifting from yellow to green and back.   
  
Harry lifted his face, his gaze apologetic, bewildered. “Sorry. Give me a second.”  
  
Lupin laid a hand on Harry’s arm, feeling the wild thrill of power coursing beneath icy skin. The former, at least, explained why he hadn’t sensed any tampering with his wards. In Harry’s state he’d probably passed through them oblivious.  
  
“Harry,” he said. “I think you’re in shock. We need to get you warm and dry. Can you get up? Harry?”  
  
Harry nodded and let Lupin lift him to his feet and lead him into the small bathroom. He was trembling so badly Lupin finally had him simply lean on the wall while he ran as hot a bath as the facilities allowed, then carefully stripped dirty, wet clothing off the boy.  
  
Lupin whipped out his wand, made the warm water actually hot, threw in some Soothingsoap crystals and helped Harry slide into the tub, up to his chin. Harry shuddered in a deep breath, and his entire body shook in a sob, a harsh, wracking sound that made the alarmed werewolf grab his shoulders to steady him.  
  
Harry shook his head and gulped back the noise, whispering, “I’m sorry.” His voice was thin and cold in the bare bathroom.  
  
“You have nothing to be sorry about, Harry,” Remus said, without knowing in the least if that were true. He grabbed a flannel and gave the boy more of a rub-down than an actual scrubbing, then drew him – limp but warm, no longer shaking – out of the bath, dried him off and bundled him into the only good dressing gown he owned (a Christmas gift from Dumbledore).  
  
He sat Harry on the couch. “Wait. I’ll make some tea. Are you hungry?”  
  
He didn’t really expect a response, so was not disappointed when Harry just slouched staring into the fire. Lupin put the kettle on, put away his groceries, shoved aside his unopened copy of the Daily Prophet, and put some bread into his tiny oven to toast.  
  
When he went back into the sitting room Harry hadn’t moved, but he spoke without prompting.  
  
“I didn’t know where else to go.”  
  
Lupin sat next to him. “Harry, you are always welcome to come to me. Always.” He squeezed Harry’s arm. “Tea and toast are on the way. Can you … do you want to tell me what’s happened?”  
  
Harry turned his stare from the fire to Lupin.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said, tears trembling in his voice although his eyes were dry. “I don’t know what I did.”  
  
“Harry.” Lupin pressed his arm again. “Start at the beginning.” He sought for a way to help. “The Leaving Feast was only last night, wasn’t it? Did something happen at the Feast?”   
  
Harry shook his head. “After. I left. I was going home.” The last word was the merest breath of air, but Lupin shivered.  
  
“Home?” he echoed.  
  
“To Se—” Another sob caught at the words, but Harry gave his head a single sharp shake and forced himself to continue. “To Severus. To Castle Snape.”  
  
Lupin sat very still; he’d been somewhat out of touch, both with Harry and with the Order, but that was a lot to take in all at once. Obviously a great deal more had been going on with Harry and Snape than he’d realised.  
  
The kettle whistled and he jumped. “Wait, Harry. I’ll be right back.”   
  
“No!” Harry grabbed his arm with surprising strength, staring up at him. “Don’t. Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”  
  
“Harry.” Lupin tried to free himself gently. “I won’t. I’m just—”  
  
“Don’t tell anyone,” Harry repeated.  
  
More firmly Lupin said, “Harry, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to. I’m just going to get the tea. Hear the kettle?” He waited, affecting calm, until Harry blinked, looked toward the kitchen, and abruptly slumped, releasing his hold.  
  
Lupin hurried into the kitchen, pouring and sugaring and buttering toast and trying to get himself up to speed based on the little information he’d just been given. Harry apparently had left the Leaving Feast to go to Snape’s old ancestral home – a place Harry himself had called home. And then something – something bad – had happened. What could have happened between last night and this afternoon to leave the boy so distraught?  
  
Lupin collected the tea things onto a tray and went back into his sitting room, formulating questions that might draw out the explanations he needed in order to help.  
  
Harry was leaning against the couch’s armrest when Lupin came back in. Asleep.  
  
Lupin sighed, set the loaded tray on his tiny table and went to fetch a blanket. It was probably for the best. The boy needed rest as much as he needed food. When he awoke, no doubt Lupin would learn what else Harry needed.  
  
Lupin tucked Harry up and stood looking at him, weighing Harry’s plea with Lupin’s own concerns. He knew he ought to contact someone. Dumbledore, or the Weasleys, someone more in touch, someone who knew what was going on. But Harry had been so disturbed ...  
  
“All right, Harry,” he said softly. “You get tonight. But tomorrow … tomorrow I’ll need some answers.”  
  


* * *

  
  
In the wee hours before dawn, Lupin shot upright in his bed at the sound of a lung-shredding shriek. Flinging off his covers, he ran into the living room, where Harry was thrashing the blanket onto the floor and struggling to sit up.  
  
Lupin grabbed the flailing boy and held him, easing onto the sofa, hearing Harry moan, “No, no—” until he shuddered, then stilled, gasping for air.  
  
“Harry?” Lupin leaned back to look at the boy’s tear-streaked face. “It was a nightmare. You’re all right. You’re safe.”  
  
Harry stared blankly at him for a moment, catching his breath.  
  
“Remus?”  
  
“You’re safe, Harry. It was a dream.” Lupin eased his hold and let Harry sit back on the couch.   
  
Harry rubbed his palms across his damp face, then dropped them into his lap, gazing at them.  
  
“I killed them all,” he said. “The Death Eaters.”  
  
“Is that what you dreamed?” Lupin said. His understanding had been that Harry had no clear memory of that day.  
  
Harry nodded. “But I dreamed … Severus. He was there too. I killed him.”  
  
The headline in yesterday’s paper, read in the evening while Harry slept, flashed in Lupin’s mind. The possibility that Harry was speaking the truth – that he’d somehow killed Snape – was remote, but …  
  
“Harry, what happened at Castle Snape?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry repeated his words of the day before, but with more life – more bewilderment – to them. “I left Hogwarts. I flew to him – to Castle Snape. Everything seemed the same. Normal. But Severus was … he was angry.”  
  
“At you?” Lupin pressed.  
  
“Yes. Well, at first I don’t know.” Harry’s head turned side to side, slowly, as he sorted through one mystery after another. “But I touched his arm. And the castle … it just. Blew apart.” He swallowed roughly. “It was something I did, but I don’t know what.”  
  
“How do you know it was something you did?” Remus asked.  
  
Harry shrugged. “It happened the moment I got there. The moment I touched him. Everything was fine until I got there.”  
  
“That doesn’t make it your fault, Harry.”  
  
Harry stared at Lupin, his bleak eyes longing – and refusing – to believe.  
  
“Was Severus injured in the explosion?” Lupin asked.  
  
Harry shook his head. “He was … angry. Angry at me.”  
  
“How is it neither of you was hurt?”  
  
“I don’t know. There was a … Severus had wards up around himself when I got there. I think I … he must have pulled me into them. I don’t know.”  
  
“It sounds as if Severus was expecting trouble,” Lupin said. “Did you … did the two of you talk about what had happened? Did he have any theories as to who or what it was?”  
  
Harry was shaking his head before Lupin even finished. “He … he just screamed at me to go. That it was my fault.” His voice wavered and he cleared his throat. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know … he might be right. Maybe it was my fault. So I left.”  
  
“That night?” Lupin scowled in puzzlement. “Where were you between then and yesterday afternoon?”  
  
Harry squinted at the embers of last night’s fire. “I don’t … I apparated away. To the Burrow. It was after midnight. I sat in their front garden for … I don’t know. A long time. I just couldn’t…” He glanced at Remus. “They really don’t like him. Severus. And I knew if I went in there …” He closed his eyes, shook away the thought, and Remus thought  _Good god, you_  are  _in love with him._  
  
“I couldn’t do it,” Harry went on. “I left, just before the sun came up. I went back. Back to the castle. To what was left of it. I thought maybe—”  
  
“You wanted to talk to him.”  
  
Harry nodded. “He wasn’t there. I sat there and … and tried to think what to do.”  
  
“Why didn’t you go to Hogwarts?” Lupin asked. Harry snorted and for the first time in hours Lupin saw something other than grief and confusion on his face; that it was scorn didn’t reassure him.  
  
“Why should I?” Harry asked. “Dumbledore doesn’t care about me or Severus. He wouldn’t help.”  
  
“He—” Remus began, but Harry’s expression stopped him.  
  
“Anyway, finally it started to rain so I had to think about where to go.” He looked at Lupin. “I didn’t want to intrude, and I’ll go somewhere else as soon as I can—”  
  
“Harry. You aren’t intruding. I don’t exactly have an active social life, and you don’t take up much room.”  
  
Harry forced a weak smile.  
  
“But … what are you going to do?”  
  
Harry said nothing.  
  
“Harry, the first thing you need to do is tell your friends you’re all right. They’ll all have seen yesterday’s paper—”  
  
When Harry’s expression creased with puzzlement, Lupin went into the kitchen and fetched the Daily Prophet, spreading the front page before Harry’s eyes.  
  
“Oh, no …” Harry grabbed it and scanned the story. “Ron and Hermione knew I was going there. They’ll think … can I Floo them from here?” He darted a look at Lupin.  
  
“I’m not on the network,” Lupin said. “I can’t afford it.” He smiled at Harry’s expression. “Very few people in Knockturn Alley can, Harry. But the place has its advantages. The main one being they’ll rent to even a werewolf if he has the money.”  
  
Harry said, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Lupin shrugged. “We can send owls to your friends.” He glanced at his curtained windows; morning sunlight was filtering through the threadbare cloth.  
  
“I have some money,” Harry said. “In my pocket – if it’s not gone. My trunk’s in there.”  
  
Lupin nodded. “Then at least they’ll know you’re safe.” Carefully he said, “Will you want to send Severus a message?”  
  
Harry laughed, a terrible sound. “How can I? I don’t even know where he is. Besides, he doesn’t want to know. I don’t blame him.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Harry gave him a hard, miserable look. “It was because of me.”  
  
“Harry—”  
  
“No!” Harry jumped up, flushed with anger, pacing in front of the fireplace. “They were after  _me._  It was Death Eaters. It had to be. Who else would do it? They must have known I was going to the castle.”  
  
“Harry, that doesn’t mean—” Lupin began.  
  
“Don’t you understand? He lost everything.” Harry slammed a fist onto the flimsy mantel, making the candles there shudder. “ _Everything!_  Every goddamned thing he had, he lost because of me!”  
  
He looked bleakly at Remus. “How am I supposed to make up for that?”  
  
“It isn’t your fault,” Remus repeated in a stern, quiet voice. “You both have enemies, through no fault of your own.”  
  
“I killed Voldemort,” Harry said softly. “Not him. They want me dead because of that. He was just … just in the way, or … or they knew they could find me there because we—” He clutched at the warped wood of the mantelpiece, staring into the dying fire. “It’s better if I … if I stay away from him. If … if they think I’m dead, maybe they’ll …” He straightened, turned to Lupin. “I don’t want to go out. Not yet. Will you help me?”  
  
Lupin got up, surprised at this suddenly decisive side of Harry. “Of course. What do you want me to do?”  
  
“Send word to Ron and Hermione that I’m OK but that they’re not to tell anyone else – for now,” he added as Lupin began to protest. “I’m safe if whoever it was thinks I’m dead. If everyone thinks so, for right now. We’re all safer. I need … I need to think about what to do.”  
  
Lupin cocked his head and examined Harry. “I think you’ve already decided what you’re going to do.”  
  
Harry pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes, as if trying to rub away a headache, then looked straight at Lupin, green eyes haunted, determined. “They took everything Severus had. They took him from me. Whoever did this is going to pay for it.”  
  
Skin at the back of his neck tingling, Lupin went into his bedroom to get dressed.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Rook to Queen’s rook five.”  
  
The door to the room opened and closed, and a small figure approached the board and the two men on either side of it, the black head and the blond bent over their lesser strategies.  
  
Gregor kept his eyes on the game, save for a darting glance at his opponent’s face when Gregor’s rook took his knight.  
  
When it became clear the dwarf would wait and not interrupt, Gregor spoke.   
  
“Well?”  
  
The dwarf bowed low, his flat black eyes darting about the elegant room. A light drizzle of fireplace ash drifted from his shoulders.  
  
“I’ve done it, sir.”  
  
Draco’s smiled. “He’s dead, then.” He reached out and tipped over his remaining knight.  
  
Gregor’s mouth twitched and he turned his gaze on the fidgeting dwarf.  
  
“Well? Is he in fact dead?”  
  
The dwarf’s pudgy hands twisted together. “He was in Knockturn Alley this morning, as you thought. I cast the spell-globe at him, sir, in the street. It exploded at his feet and he fell.”  
  
Gregor stood, a sudden, sinuous uncoiling of his long body. “You are not, I hope, about to tell me that you did not make certain he was dead?” He leaned over the dwarf, who shrank away.  
  
“I … I … swear it struck him, sir. I saw him fall. But there were … there were witnesses, sir. I had to get away.”  
  
Draco’s hand clenched around his tipped knight. “What?” He looked up at his uncle; Gregor’s nose was pinched, his lips trembling just perceptibly, but his voice came out even, almost hypnotic.  
  
“So you do not know he is dead.”  
  
“S-sir … he must be. The spell struck him. He fell. He crawled. But I could not follow. There were too many people. But—”  
  
Gregor’s wand flashed into his hand. The dwarf cowered, but didn’t flee.  
  
“Why have you taken so long to come to me,” Gregor asked, “if you say you saw him this morning?”  
  
“Sir, I had to be certain I wasn’t followed. From the scene. From my rooms to this place.”  
  
“Liar!” Draco snapped. “You ran away. You hid. You were afraid.”  
  
Eyes fixed on Gregor, the dwarf shook his head, wide, frantic shakes in answer to Draco’s accusation.  
  
Gregor smiled. “Come, nephew. Have you never been guilty of those things?” He crossed his arms, wand dangling from his fingers.  
  
Draco flushed, pale skin mottled with red, but Gregor never removed his stare from the dwarf.  
  
“Where did you say you encountered Severus?” he asked with honeyed ease.  
  
“At th-the corner – that is, just outside Maladie & Krank.”  
  
“Ah yes.” Gregor smiled. “I know the shop.” He tipped the end of his wand toward the dwarf and spoke, as though in passing.  
  
 _“Avada Kedavra.”_  
  
Draco flinched in startlement at the flash of green and almost instant backwash of power. As he blinked away the afterimage, Gregor aimed his wand at the dwarf’s body.  
  
 _“Incendio.”_  
  
The corpse flared, flames licking toward the ceiling for a moment, then collapsing into a pile of ash and a few spirals of black, stinking smoke.  
  
“Come.” Gregor strode forward, his booted toes scattering the coarse ashes, his heels grinding them into the carpet. “Let us go find my cousin.”   
  
Draco swallowed, walked around the mess and followed his uncle out the door.  
  


* * *

  
  
When Lupin came home hours later, the first thing he noticed was the smell of breakfast. The second was Hedwig. The snowy owl stood sleepily on an owl roost that Lupin belatedly recognised as his umbrella stand, transfigured. The third was Harry at the cooker, sleeves rolled up, working a spatula through a big pan of scrambled eggs and sausage.  
  
Relieved that Harry was still there and safe, Lupin smiled.  
  
“I didn’t know you could cook, Harry.”  
  
“The Dursleys made sure of that,” Harry said, toneless. He watched the gently sizzling pan as he spoke. “I’ve rented a flat across the road. But I wanted to pay you back, for your help, so I thought ...” He shrugged over the pan of eggs. “Sorry it’s a little late, but Hedwig got here with a note from Ron, so I read that first. She must’ve gone straight to the Burrow when she didn’t find me at … at the castle.”  
  
“Harry, you don’t have to leave.”  
  
Harry’s lips thinned in something like a smile.  
  
“I won’t try to stop you doing whatever it is you have to do,” Lupin said.  
  
“Yes you will,” Harry countered.  
  
“I want to help you,” Lupin insisted.  
  
Harry flipped the sausages, then turned off the cooker.  
  
“You’ll tell Dumbledore,” he said, looking full at Lupin. “If you haven’t already. I don’t want him interfering. I’ve had enough of that.”  
  
“I haven’t spoken to Albus,” Lupin said, keeping his voice as calm as Harry’s, but without, he hoped, that chilling lack of emotion. “I sent owls to Ron and Hermione, as you requested, nothing more. And what is it you intend to do, anyway?”  
  
“Find Malfoy.”  
  
“Malfoy,” Lupin repeated blankly.  
  
“It had to be him,” Harry went on. “Or at least he had to’ve been involved. I can’t imagine his being clever enough for something like this, but – do you remember I told you he bashed into me at school?” He collected plates and cutlery, oddly efficient in someone else’s kitchen, oddly domestic while coolly discussing vengeance.  
  
Lupin nodded. “It sounded strange, I’ll grant you.”  
  
“It was deliberate,” Harry said. “It was planned.”  
  
“Something from your person,” Lupin divined, scowling, scanning his memories. “Yes, perhaps. Many curse spells require a personal item.”   
  
“I’m going to find him,” Harry said. “Find out what he did.”  
  
“The Ministry should arrest him, if he was involved in the attack on you and Severus,” Lupin argued. Harry nodded and the small tight knot of fear in Lupin’s throat eased a little.  
  
Then Harry said, “When I’m through with him.”  
  
Lupin froze. Harry ladled up two plates full of the steaming egg and sausage and walked past Lupin into the sitting room, saying over his shoulder, “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape opened his eyes and his head exploded.  
  
“The basin is here,” a voice said. A hand at his shoulder eased him up and over and he vomited, body heaving, brain whirling.   
  
The hand and basin stayed steady. When he was reduced to retching, the voice said wryly, “Good thing you hadn’t eaten much.”  
  
The basin was taken away and he was eased back onto what he realized was a bed, head throbbing and eyes watering. His fingers fumbled automatically for his wand and found it in the pocket of a robe he knew was not his own, a light sleeping robe. His curled his fingers about his wand as a damp cloth covered his face and he was briskly wiped down. He blinked away the moisture in his eyes and squinted up at a tanned face, lined but handsome, and a pair of amused grey eyes.  
  
A hand slid under his head and a cup was held to his lips.  
  
“This is just water.”   
  
Snape sniffed it anyway, and the man chuckled. Once Snape had drunk the whole cup and had his head deposited back on the bed, he said, “Raphael.”  
  
It came out a whisper, and the man was already halfway across the room, but he turned, said, “Wait,” and was gone.  
  
Snape eased his grip on his wand, blinking at the plastered ceiling as he evaluated his condition. Beyond the headache, nothing hurt more than he could stand. Nothing – he moved a few extremities experimentally – nothing seemed broken. He pushed himself into a sitting position. The hammering in his head increased and his stomach twitched, so he waited. When it didn’t worsen, he grasped the wooden bedpost and pulled himself to his feet.  
  
Every organ in his body did a somersault.  
  
He awoke to the word, “Idiot,” spoken with some feeling by his rescuer.  
  
He was back on the bed, brain still hammering to be let out, stomach begging to be given something to throw up.  
  
He squinted up at the proprietor of Maladie & Krank, Apothecaries. “I need to find Harry.”  
  
Raphael held him down with one hand on his shoulder. “I believe you, Professor Snape. But you won’t be doing it this instant. Now, you can try to leave and fall on the floor, or down the stairs, thus accomplishing nothing save making a spectacle of yourself, or you can let me help you reach a state in which you might walk out of here on your own two feet and find this Harry or whoever else you wish to find.”  
  
With his free hand he flipped back his long braid of brown-grey hair. Then he waited. Snape breathed, inhaling patience and exhaling impatience.  
  
Finally he snarled out, “Thank you.”  
  
Raphael let out a soft hmph. “Do you know what you were cursed with?”  
  
 _“Afficaedero,”_  Snape said. “I managed to get out part of the countercurse.”  
  
“Ah. That explains why you’re alive, though it doesn’t explain how you ended up unconscious in my rubbish alcove. Lie still.” He left the room and Snape heard a soft thudding, as of feet descending stairs. He looked at the window; daylight, but of what day? How much time had he lost, and what had happened in that time?   
  
He was considering trying to sit up again when Raphael came back in, a small glass of thick pink fluid in one hand, a newspaper in the other.  
  
“Drink this.” He held out the glass.  
  
“What is it?” Snape demanded.  
  
“Cyanide,” Raphael said.  
  
“Good.” Snape took the glass with one weak hand, sniffed at it – a nutritive, pain killer and anti-curse elixir (and a costly one) – and drank it down.   
  
Raphael took the glass, set it on the bedside table, and sat in the hard chair next the bed. “Well you might think so.” He unfolded the paper. “Before you fall asleep again, which should be in about a quarter hour, let me read some tidbits from today’s Prophet.”  
  
“I can’t sleep,” Snape complained.  
  
Raphael rattled the paper a little. “Unless you’ve forgotten everything you used to know about curses, you know better than I that your body won’t give you a choice.”  
  
“What day is it?” Snape asked. “When did you find me?”  
  
“You’ve been unconscious since yesterday afternoon, when I found you in my tip at the back. It’s now just gone nine.”  
  
Snape groaned. Raphael eyed him, then turned those light, piercing eyes to the newspaper and read: “Harry Potter missing. Slayer of Voldemort has not been seen since Hogwarts Leaving Feast. Sources say Snape Castle last known destination of Boy Who Lived –”  
  
Snape grabbed the paper out of Raphael’s hands and held it to his own face with clenched fists.  
  
  
  
 _The Prophet has learned that, strange as it may seem, alleged Death Eater and former Hogwarts Professor Severus Snape is not the only possible casualty of the mysterious destruction of Castle Snape two days ago. None other than the Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter, has not been seen since that night, and sources close to the slayer of Voldemort have told this reporter that Harry departed Hogwarts on the night of the Leaving Feast with Castle Snape as his destination.  
  
Incredible as that may appear to many, several Hogwarts eyewitnesses have confirmed that Potter planned to spend the summer at the ancestral home of his former professor.  
  
However, no explanation of that is forthcoming from witnesses, and the two wizards at the center of it – Potter and Snape – have not been seen in two days. It remains unknown whether either man is alive.   
  
Those closest to the Boy Who Lived would not speak of his whereabouts, saying only that they trusted he was well and would reveal himself at a time of his choice. Whether they are covering up for some crazy jaunt of the vanished hero of the wizarding world, or genuinely do not know Potter’s present location, is not clear. But Potter, known for his rebellious behaviour and occasional flouting of Wizarding law, may well have chosen to go into hiding for reasons of his own, reasons about which this reporter shall not speculate. It is also possible the investigating squad from the Ministry of Magic will find his remains in the rubble of the castle which they are in the process of investigating.  
  
Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, teacher, mentor and confidante of the Boy Who Lived, informed the Daily Prophet that …_  
  
  
  
Snape let his heavy eyelids fall – then forced them open again.  
  
Raphael said mildly, “You and your losses seem to have been rather forgotten in the uproar over Harry Potter.”  
  
“Someone didn’t forget me,” Snape said. “Someone is still trying to kill me.”  _And Harry. You have to find him, warn him…_  
  
“Might you know the identity of that someone?”  
  
Snape shook his head, felt his brain floating, drifting within his skull. “I need to find Harry,” he muttered. “Warn him…”  
  
“Do you know where he is?” Raphael asked. “Might I warn him for you?”  
  
Snape tried to shake his head again; it lolled to one side and he passed into sleep.  
  


* * *

  
  
Gregor frowned at the stain of glimmering magic splashed across the cobblestones.   
  
“Hm.” He glanced at his nephew; Draco stood behind him, stiff, shoulders drawn in, a Lucius-like twist of contempt and his own nervousness dancing in turns across his face as he looked around the seedy intersection, glaring at those passersby who gazed too long at the two well-dressed visitors.  
  
“The spell was cast, and Severus was here,” Gregor said softly.   
  
“The dwarf said he crawled,” Draco replied.   
  
Gregor shushed him and whispered a spell. Closing his eyes, he said, “He was here, yes …” He took one deliberate step, then two. “He moved this way…”  
  
Draco followed his uncle to a narrow, cluttered, filthy alleyway.  
  
Gregor stopped and opened his eyes. “Here. And here the spell stops. Hm.” He looked around and the rubbish bins, stained cobblestones, and fat, fearless rats in the narrow space.  
  
“If he died,” Draco said. “Would that cancel your tracing spell?”  
  
Gregor sighed. “It is a miracle you passed your OWLs if this is the level of attention you pay to what is told you.”  
  
Draco flushed again. “You have no right—”  
  
Gregor whirled upon him.  _“Silence.”_  
  
Draco’s mouth snapped shut and Gregor leaned over him, lowering his voice.  
  
“We have more important concerns than your ego or your ignorance. It is possible Severus detected my subspell and removed it. Or that someone else found his body and did the same.” He straightened and looked about him. “Perhaps a more mundane inquiry will reveal whether anyone saw what happened to our … unfortunate relative.” He swept past the still seething Draco. “Come.”  
  
Draco snarled under his breath and followed his uncle.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Harry,” Lupin said, keeping his tone as calm and reasonable as he could. “Don’t do anything … rash.”  
  
Harry placed the last of the dishes into the sink, drew his wand and cast a washing-up spell over them, then tucked his wand away.  
  
“I’m not. I’m going to find Malfoy and find out what he did.”  
  
Lupin shook his head. “Where will you look? The Malfoys’ home is in Wiltshire, but I don’t know precisely where. It’s unplotted. Naturally.”  
  
“Someone must know.” Harry went to the window and opened it, whistling for Hedwig. She flew to his arm – a sudden and startling explosion of feathered whiteness in the small room – and he nodded across the street, then tossed her into the sky. She soared out of sight, presumably stretching her wings before heading to Harry’s new flat.  
  
Lupin stood between Harry and the door. “Harry. Please. What exactly are you planning to do?”  
  
Harry turned, drawing his head back to meet Lupin’s eyes. Whatever he’d intended to say, if anything, was cut off by a knock at the door.  
  
They exchanged a startled look before Lupin went to the door and said clearly, “Who is it?” while casting a revealing spell.  
  
The voice carried faintly through the thin, warped wood at the same moment the spell confirmed the speaker’s identity.  
  
“Be so good as to let me in, Remus.”  
  
Dumbledore.  
  


* * *

  
  
“I have something to show you,” Raphael said the instant Snape opened his eyes again.  
  
He sat up, hand again curling instinctively around his wand. His head hurt. Twinges of pain like little electrical shocks sparked throughout his body. But he could move, and think, and he needed nothing else.  
  
Raphael set a hand to his elbow and they left the bedchamber.  
  
“Your robes – you perhaps have missed them? They were contaminated, both with my garbage and with residual magic.”  
  
Snape stopped. “You didn’t—”  
  
“No. It was my first thought, of course, but I realised that as they were they might contain information you needed.”  
  
Snape’s alarm deflated. “You have always shown the highest level of good sense.”  
  
Raphael delivered a half mocking little bow, and his long braid fell forward. He flipped it back. “I’ve locked them up in a room I use for experiments, but given what I’ve sensed on them, you’d do well to destroy them the moment you’re through.”   
  
They went downstairs, through the shop and into the cellars, thence along a short, damp stone corridor.  
  
There Raphael passed his wand before a heavy iron-bound door and uttered an unlocking cant. The sound of something solid thudded on the other side of the wood, and Raphael opened the door and said,  _“Lumos.”_  
  
His wand illuminated a long, narrow room, lined with cluttered tables. A cauldron rested on the floor and Raphael nodded Snape toward it.  
  
“Your robes. I hope you’ll forgive my lack of delicacy with both your clothes and your modesty, but it seemed prudent to get them off of you as quickly as possible.”  
  
Snape felt the prickle of containment spells over his skin as he entered the windowless chamber. Indeed his robes, underclothing and boots rested bunched in the cauldron, dirty and stained and shimmering with magic made visible by the spells in the room.  
  
He drew his own wand and cast a revealing incantation, wondering what he would find aside from confirmation of the spell the dwarf had thrown at him in the street.   
  
He detected, unsurprisingly, residue from the castle as well as from the explosive spell that had leveled it. He hadn’t time or materials to determine the precise nature or ingredients of that casting, but he did detect something else.  
  
“Cunning …  _bastard,”_  he hissed when he realised what it was.  
  
Raphael said over his shoulder, “Was I correct in thinking I read a tracing spell woven into a larger, more complicated conjury?”  
  
Snape nodded, teeth gritted in fury. Fingers clenched white-knuckled around his wand, he spat,  _“Incendio!”_  and watched as his robes combusted. Multicolored flames and smoke swirled upward as cloth, leather and residual magic were consumed, finally collapsing into ash in the bottom of the cauldron.  
  
Snape inhaled slowly. “Thank you for your help.” He looked at Raphael, who chuckled softly.  
  
“You’re welcome. Shall we find you clothing more appropriate for your quest?”  
  
A quarter hour later, clad in borrowed, spelled-to-fit robes and shoes, Snape was escorted to the door of the shop by his host.  
  
As Raphael unlocked the door, it occurred to Snape that the man had kept his shop closed all day while helping him.  
  
Awkward, he asked, “Why have you done all this?” Though he’d done much business in the past with Maladie & Krank, since his sacking he’d bought nothing from them – their wares, though excellent, were too dear for his pocket. He ought to know, as he’d supplied several of them in the past few months.  
  
One hand on the door handle, Raphael offered him a brief, brilliantly white smile. “I have a seldom-tested weakness for extremely intelligent people. In my small and quiet way, I’ve always been somewhat fond of you.”  
  
Snape sighed. “The entire world has gone insane.”  
  
Raphael cocked his head, an amused gesture, and opened the door. “At least you’re forewarned. Good fortune to you, Severus Snape.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Acutely aware of Harry standing stiff at his back, Lupin unwarded and unlocked the door, opening it to reveal Dumbledore.  
  
The headmaster entered at an unhurried pace, nodding cordially to Lupin as he passed, stopping in the front room, where Harry stood fuming.  
  
“Harry, I didn’t tell him,” Lupin said. “I gave you my word and I kept it.”  
  
“Remus didn’t reveal your presence here, Harry,” Dumbledore said, sounding tireder than Lupin felt. “I deduced it. I understand that you are unhappy with me, but I was, and am, concerned about both you and Severus.”  
  
“Liar.” The word was soft, absolute.  
  
“Harry—” Lupin admonished. “The headmaster is not your enemy.”  
  
Fists knotted at his sides, Harry radiated anger, impatience, and an odd, unnerving control.  
  
“He’s going to try to stop me. Just like you.”  
  
“I’m not going to try to stop you,” Dumbledore said. “How could I when I haven’t the least idea what you’re planning to do? I only wished to speak to you, to be sure you’re all right and to remind you that I am always ready to listen and to help – whenever you wish.”  
  
“I don’t wish.” Harry started forward so abruptly Lupin jumped. “I’m going. Remus, thank you for helping me.”  
  
“Harry, please. How are you even going to find—”  
  
“Don’t!” Harry snapped, and Dumbledore stiffened, alert. The small room pulsed with soundless power.  
  
Lupin stepped back, instinctively – out of the line of fire.  
  
“Harry.” Dumbledore’s voice was low, dangerous. “What is it you’re planning?”  
  
Harry shook his head, two jerks, left and right. “It’s none of your business any more. Nothing I do is any of your business.”  
  
“Can you tell me where Severus is, at least?” Dumbledore asked, layering calm over his palpable anxiety. Lupin wasn’t fooled and he suspected Harry wasn’t either.  
  
“Why? So you can try to manipulate him? Use him again? Or do you want to use him to manipulate me?” Harry shook his head again, disgusted. “Why can’t you just stop? We did what you wanted. Why can’t you leave us alone?”  
  
Anger twisted tighter in Harry’s face and stance as Dumbledore ignored the questions, saying instead, “Harry, don’t take the law into your own hands. You’ll regret it.”  
  
Harry’s nostrils flared, twice, as he visibly fought to remain calm. He said, “It’s too late to say that to me. You people – all of you – made me take the law into my hands when you made me into the only person who could kill Voldemort. It’s too late to take it back.”  
  
“We didn’t—”  
  
“It’s too late!” Harry shouted. “You  _made_  me into this.” He held out his hands. “You made me a killer. You don’t get to tell me any more who to kill.”  
  
“You’re going to kill Draco?” Lupin said. His voice seemed a whisper in contrast to Harry’s.  
  
“Not until he tells me what he did,” Harry hissed.  
  
“Harry,” Dumbledore said, his tone tremulous with pleading. “Don’t do this. Don’t become like them. You … the deaths of Voldemort and his followers were not deliberate murder. This—”  
  
“Shut  _up!”_  
  
The room vibrated as if from a sonic boom; the window rattled in its cheap frame and Harry took a step closer to Dumbledore, his wand in his hand though Lupin never saw him draw it. Alarmed, he reached out, but Harry ignored him, flushed, shaking, but intent on the headmaster.  
  
“I’m  _sick_  of you letting other people do whatever they want to me, then telling me I can’t hit back. You made me a weapon, but you only wanted me aimed at Riddle.” He sucked in a breath. “Well, you don’t get to aim me anymore. You don’t get to control me. You don’t give a damn about me and you never did, and you aren’t going to tell me what to do anymore.”  
  
He started forward, stopping abruptly when Dumbledore moved to stand square in front of the door, hands raised placatingly.  
  
“Harry,” he said softly. “Please don’t.”  
  
Harry laughed, an ugly, alien sound. “Are you going to stop me?”  
  
He whipped his wand up and Lupin flinched, but he aimed high and the door behind Dumbledore blasted away from its frame, crashing into the wall across the corridor and falling to the floor.  
  
Dumbledore didn’t move as Harry strode past him, out into the hall and away.  
  
Somewhere Lupin found the ability to breathe; he moved toward Dumbledore, watching the headmaster deflate, almost slump.  
  
“It’s my fault,” he said softly, as to himself, closing his eyes for a moment. “I should have been more …” He shook his head.  
  
“Why didn’t you ...” Lupin said, peering after Harry. “… stop him?”  
  
Dumbledore smiled sadly, looking every one of his years. “What makes you think I can?”  
  
Lupin stared a moment, his world shaken, then hurried after Harry.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry ran down the steps and paused on the stoop, head spinning, dizzy at what he’d just – almost – done. There was no sense of power, of triumph; he felt sick and furious; his hands fisted, longing to break something. He slid his wand back into his pocket and looked up and down the street, blindly, unable to think past anger and the one imperative of getting even with whoever had done this to him and Severus.  
  
At last he thought of Hermione. She was the only person he could think of who would help him no matter what, and who – unlike Ron, for all his loyalty – was clever enough to come up with a way to find out where the Malfoys lived.  
  
Harry started up the street toward Diagon Alley; after so many letters, both by owl and by Muggle post, he knew the Grangers’ address by heart. All he needed was a taxi and the Muggle funds to get him there.  
  


* * *

  
  
As they left the third shop, Gregor paused in the doorway to huff out a short sigh of exasperation. Draco, scanning Knockturn Alley, turned to look up at him, then froze. Gregor felt the boy’s fingers dig suddenly into the flesh above his elbow.  
  
Gregor looked at the boy, heard him say, “Potter,” even as he followed Draco’s stare.  
  
Tallish, skinny, the black-haired youth stood out among the scattering of other wizards and witches, partly due to his ridiculous Muggle clothes, but mostly because of his white face and swift stride, both speaking of tension, determination �– and obliviousness to everything around him.  
  
Feeling his own mouth stretch in a triumphant grimace, Gregor stepped out of the doorway and swept out his wand.  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape rounded a corner – and surprise jerked him to a halt. In one strange, slow-motion moment he saw Draco, a tall, black-haired man –  _Gods above, Gregor, it’s **Gregor** , it’s him, it’s all been  **him**_  – and, across the street, Harry.  
  
Gregor raised his wand and pointed it at Harry’s back.  
  
Snape took a split-second, calculated risk and shouted:  
  
“Gregor!”  
  
His cousin started. Knowing he would least expect physical attack, Snape launched himself bodily at Gregor, flinging his arms around him and grappling him to the cobblestones.  
  
Gregor grunted, flailed – the spell snapped back, enveloping the two men in a rainbow of lights and liquid pain.  
  
Through a rapidly narrowing tunnel Snape glimpsed Harry, surprise still on his face even as he lunged toward them, groping for his wand, shouting “Severus!”  
  
Then blackness.  
  


* * *

  
  
Snape snapped back into awareness tumbling, spinning helpless inside a bubble of magic – of antimagic. Though he couldn’t see and could hear only the crackle of the spell around him, he felt every bruising jolt as the bubble carried him … wherever Gregor wished. Snape tried to speak a quick counterspell and felt it fall useless from his lips and mind, absorbed as raw, aimless power into the bubble.  
  
Despite the pain and disorientation, Snape had a spare moment of admiration for his cousin’s spell. From the outside a simple release spell would shatter the  _cingeraequaro,_  but from within it was impermeable to most magic – the structure simply absorbed the power behind the spell as dry ground absorbed rainfall.  
  
The bubble stopped and he came to rest inside it, gasping against the random throbbing all over his body. He felt for his wand with numb fingers and the bubble shattered around him. He fell heavily to the ground – a floor, stone, sharp-edged – and before he could get his bearings he was falling again, tumbling down stone steps, his body twisted as he fought to protect himself from injury.  
  
He hit hard on his left knee and rolled; his leg folded and something inside it cracked when he landed. Agonizing fire lanced up and down his leg and he curled into himself, clutching it, tears filling his eyes. Gasping, he realized he’d stopped moving.  
  
Blinking fast, he tried to right himself, clenching his teeth against the pain, forcing one hand free to grope again for his wand.  
  
“Looking for this?”  
  
He squinted up at his cousin, looming above him in dim smoky torchlight, arms crossed, a wand in each hand. The right one flicked out.  
  
 _“Compestenero!”_  
  
Snape’s hands were yanked up and back, his body pulled backward as his wrists slammed against the wall and into manacles. Dimly over the lancing throb of his left knee he felt the trickle of magic through his wrists.  
  
“Nothing wandless, nothing wordless,” Gregor said. “I was prepared for Potter, you see. But they’ll hold you just as well."  
  
Snape let his aching head fall back against the rough stone. He saw now that he was in some kind of laboratory, a cavernous room cluttered with tables and books and cauldrons. He himself was in a corner of that room, nothing between him and the lab but the containment spells worked into the manacles. He closed his eyes briefly. Gregor evidently wanted his captive in full view; Snape had no doubt that sadism, not convenience, was the reason. If he believed in any gods he’d have thanked them that it was he and not Harry in this place.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” he asked his cousin, his voice cracked with pain. “Voldemort is dead. What can you hope to accomplish?” His cousin had been at best a quiet, lukewarm supporter of Voldemort, not even within the ranks of the Death Eaters.  
  
“You aren’t a fool, Severus,” Gregor said, turning away. “Figure it out.” He tucked Severus’ wand into a box nearby and started working amongst an array of powders. Scanning them, scanning the room again, the potions and talismans and devices, Snape forced his brain to function, to bring what he saw together and understand. He almost laughed at the simplicity of it. Power. Of course. It was always power. His cousin simply wanted the power of the wizard who killed Voldemort.   
  
Snape closed his eyes once more, focusing his shaky energies and his will, and spoke the spell  _solvero_  in his mind: He felt the power swell within him – but it was stopped by the manacles, trapped within his body. He tried another, more complex freeing spell, aware that Harry would have tried most of these himself, had he been taken. Again, stopped, the manacles flaring with heat around his wrists, burning his flesh as they stoppered the magic.  
  
He gasped, trying to be quiet.  
  
“It’s no use, cousin,” Gregor said, not turning from his work. “I told you, I was expecting Potter.”  
  
Snape swallowed; his mouth was parched, metallic with the taste of his own dried blood. “You’ve gone to a ludicrous amount of trouble to trap one stupid harebrained teenager.”  
  
“He killed the Dark Lord,” Gregor said. “He’s clearly somewhat more than a stupid harebrained teenager.” He turned to smile. “Especially to you, apparently.”  
  
Snape’s chest constricted. “What will you do now that you’ve failed?”  
  
Another shrug as Gregor sprinkled moonsilver –  _with his fingers, the sloppy fool_  – into a thick, black concoction. Snape recognized it as  _liquefacerus,_  used to dissolve an entire human being in about five rather difficult-to-watch minutes.   
  
“I don’t need to do anything, now.”  
  
“You—“ Snape coughed, damning his dry throat. “You always did give up when things became difficult.”  
  
He saw the tightening of the hand holding the potion. He would have used it, Snape knew, on Harry, after he was done. He also knew Gregor wouldn’t have had the courtesy to kill Harry first. He wondered if his cousin would bother draining  _him_  of his power before killing him.  
  
“You’re mistaken,” Gregor said, through gritted teeth. “Now that I have you, the stupid boy’s favorite and most beloved traitor, I’ve only to wait. He’ll come after you.”  
  
Snape smiled. “He won’t.” He turned his face to the wall and waited to die.  
  


* * *

  
  
Draco burst into Malfoy Manor like a blizzard, driven, frozen with fear.  
  
Narcissa, arranging lilies in the crystal vases in the front hall, turned when the door slammed open, her wand still upraised, the flowers hovering like ballerinas over their destination.  
  
“Mother!” he shouted, closing the door behind him. He ran to her, his wand in his fist, his eyes wild, darting about them.  
  
“What on earth ..?” She lowered her own wand and the lilies dropped gently to the marble countertop.  
  
“We need to get out of here,” Draco gasped, grabbing her silk-clad arm.  
  
“Draco…” she said. “Calm down. What—“  
  
“Mother,” he snapped.  _“Now.”_  
  
The front door exploded.  
  
Draco and Narcissa spun, eyes gaping, and the force of the blast flung them back against the wall, spraying them with bits of magic, wood and masonry.  
  
Harry came in, wand in hand, stepping over the debris of door and wardings. He stopped when he spotted them, his face white, pinched.  
  
 _“Expelliarmus.”_  
  
He didn’t shout, but power throbbed in the air. Narcissa cried out as her wand was yanked from her fingers and flew, together with her son’s, into Harry’s waiting grasp. He squeezed; a flash of magic burned yellow around his fist, and the wands snapped audibly. Harry advanced, dropping the splinters to the floor.  
  
“Where is he?” His voice was rough, scratched, ghoulish.  
  
Narcissa cowered behind Draco; Harry’s feverish eyes locked onto his schoolmate.  
  
“H—how—“ Draco’s words were tiny gasps of fear.  
  
“I saw you,” he hissed. “You fucking coward. I saw you run.” He was sick, gasping with hate, blazing with it, and Draco paled before him. “I followed you.”  
  
He held the tip of his wand to Draco’s chin.  
  
“That man has Severus,” he said. “Where are they?”  
  
Draco swallowed, forcing himself to stand straighter.  
  
“I—I don’t know what –“  
  
Harry glanced at Narcissa, frozen behind her son. He stepped back and flicked his wand at them.  
  
 _“Affigero.”_  
  
Narcissa shrieked as she and her son were slapped backward by magic, pressed flat against the wall, arms splayed, shaking in fear.  
  
“Potter! Damn you—“ Draco fought to pull free.  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“My mother has nothing to do with this—“  
  
Narcissa sobbed, “Draco …”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“I don’t  _know!”_  Draco spat.  
  
Harry looked at Narcissa, one focused moment, and red light flashed across her body. She screamed, her body twisting and writhing against the wall. Watching her, he felt nothing.  
  
“Potter, you bastard!”  
  
Harry glared at Draco, oddly aware of how steady his wand hand was despite how badly he was shaking inside. “If you think I won’t flay her with  _Crucios_  until you talk, you’re twice the fool your father was.” He turned his eyes to her again, focusing his power, fueling the spell with his anger.   
  
Draco flinched as red flashed over Narcissa a second time, wracking her body, tearing a cry from her lungs.  
  
“Potter!” Draco screamed. “She doesn’t know!”  
  
Harry waited until Narcissa’s shriek died down to a wailing whine. “Then you’d better tell me.” The third time, he raised his wand, still surprised at how steady it was, and pointed it at the semi-conscious witch.  
  
“No! Potter – stop! Sum-Summerisle Hall. Summerisle Hall. It’s in Wales, outside Brecon … he’s there.” Draco choked in a breath, sobbed out, “He’s there.”  
  
Narcissa moaned softly, her head flopping to one side.   
  
Draco cried out, “Mother!”  
  
“She’s alive.” Harry turned to go.  
  
“Potter, you …  _bastard.”_  
  
Harry turned. Draco stared at him, his face streaked with tears and rage.  
  
“Why didn’t you just … why her? Why not me?”  
  
“Because,” Harry said through his teeth, “you are the one I hate.”  
  
He made it all the way outside and past the team of startled Aurors before bending over to vomit in the Malfoys’ rose bushes. Ignoring their stares and tentative questions – and his own mild surprise at their presence – he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then apparated.   
  


* * *

  
  
Snape found the difference between unconsciousness and simple sleep to be no difference, and the difference between those states and waking to be out of his hands. He faded in and out, waking always to the harsh clink of glass or metal or to a spoken spell, peering through a haze of pain and torch smoke at his cousin, busy at this worktable or that cauldron. Once, the bastard woke him humming, and Snape laughed, stopping when it made his head pound afresh. Aside from the aching draw of the manacles on his wrists and shoulders, and the fiery agony of his leg – he guessed his knee was broken, but it was difficult to be sure – a creeping cold had slithered all over his body. He wondered if Gregor would notice that he was dying and do something to either slow or hasten it, but his cousin continued to work with only occasional glances in his direction.  
  
He passed out again, and dreamed. He dreamed many things, disjointed, weird, short nonsensical sequences of mysterious or hateful emotion. Then he dreamed of an explosion. Behind closed, stone-heavy eyelids he dreamed of a sudden blast of white, smoke and rubble scattered everywhere.  
  
The dream was immediate, sight, sound, smell muted but clear. He heard shouting in the echoing aftermath of the explosion, saw and heard things falling – beams, bricks, glass, the ruins of whatever lay above the dungeons. He tried to move, to pull his body into a defensive ball, but he had no control over his limbs. His eyes fell shut, his mind darkening, and he forced himself to wake back into the dream, wary, as if seeing were in itself some protection, though he could neither move nor speak.  
  
Out of the stinking dust cloud of settling debris came Gregor, battered, his face scraped and twisted with anger, his black robes frosted with grit and glittering fragments of his phials and beakers. One hand held his wand; the other was outstretched, clawlike, groping for his attacker.  
  
“Potter,” he said – shouted – whispered. All Snape knew was that the name echoed in his aching head. “Potter.”  
  
 _Please, no,_  he prayed to the dream, to the part of him that longed selfishly for rescue, even at the cost of Harry’s life.  _Please, no. Damn you, no!_  
  
And Harry was there, pale, still, vibrant with power and anger, and Snape’s insides clenched. A roar swelled from nowhere to fill everywhere, flooding Snape’s senses, flooding his vision with green, his nerves with power, washing the dream and any form of consciousness worthy of the name into darkness.   
  
The roaring faded and Snape faded with it. A tiny voice spoke his name, over and over, trailing off into silence.  
  


* * *

  
  
He awoke abruptly – painfully – in a white room, surrounded by noise and strangers, witches and wizards bent over him, talking and touching and prodding with wands. He flailed at them angrily – or tried to – and his hands barely moved in response to his urgent commands. Panic swelled, fading when he realized there were only three, that they were mediwitches and a mediwizard. He had to be—  
  
“You’re in St. Mungo’s, Professor,” one of the women said, sing-song, as if he were a child or an idiot. “You’re going to be just fine. Please don’t fight us.”  
  
Something was poured down his throat and he automatically identified it as a healing sleep potion. His body was a blur, barely present, feeling neither good nor bad.  
  
A mass of grey hair topped with a purple hat swam into his vision, and a wrinkled face smiled at him.  
  
“My boy, you’re going to be all right.”  
  
Dumbledore. Snape sat up a little, dizzy, looking around him. Beyond the immediate circle of medical professionals he made out a small white room, sunlight blazing through one window. Faces moved into view, each a surprise: Arthur Weasley, Lupin, Fudge …  
  
“Rest easy,” Dumbledore said, a hand on his shoulder, easily pushing him down. “You’re going to be fine, Severus.”  
  
As his vision blurred, Snape thought he saw Harry in a corner of the room, hunched in a chair as if trying to make himself invisible. He tried again to sit up, to speak, but the potion took over and swirled him into sleep.  
  


* * *

  
  
After Arthur, Fudge and Dumbledore had returned to the Ministry for some pointless official consultation, Remus sat in thought by the sleeping Snape’s bedside for a few minutes, then left, wanting nothing more than to go home. He stopped in surprise on seeing Ron and Hermione seated on the bench outside Snape’s room. Their presence was explained by the fact that Harry was still there, at the far end of the corridor, talking with the witch and wizard in charge of Snape’s treatment. All three of them were speaking at once, intensely, though low enough that Remus couldn’t hear them.  
  
The older pair began shaking their heads, their gestures and expressions absolute. Remus wondered what in the world Harry could be asking of them that they would refuse.  
  
Harry leaned toward them, abruptly, and the gestures and headshaking stopped. Flushed, he spoke for a moment, one hand upraised, then swept that hand in a slash across the air between them.   
  
Mediwitch and mediwizard both drew back as if he’d threatened them. Remus thought he probably had, and moved toward them, beckoning Ron and Hermione to accompany him. They jumped up – Ron looming over him, Remus was startled to note – and followed him, nervously, as though Harry had told them to stay back.  
  
 _He’s outgrown everyone, left them behind. Everyone but Severus._  Remus shook his head.  
  
“—whatever you say, Mr. Potter,” the mediwizard was saying. The witch beside him nodded when Harry turned his glare to her.  
  
“Good,” he snapped, pointing at Snape’s room. “That man was instrumental in defeating Voldemort and I don’t  _ever_  want to hear that he got less than the very best this place has to offer.”  
  
Remus stopped, feeling Ron and Hermione at his back, their own surprise mingling with his.  
  
“We treat all our patients equally.” The mediwizard attempted to draw up some dignity.  
  
“I want him treated better than equally,” Harry said, stubborn, illogical and irresistible as always. Remus could have smiled had he not seen the exhaustion and grief on Harry’s face. His Muggle jeans and jumper were frayed, stained with dirt and dark liquids; his unnatural stiffness revealed the toll the past days had taken on him.  
  
“Mr. Snape is in excellent hands,” the mediwitch said, grabbing the wizard’s arm. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Potter, we must get back to our duties.” She pulled her colleague away, down the corridor, and their heads tilted together. Mutterings about celebrities and abuse of power faded as they returned to Snape’s room.  
  
“You didn’t have to browbeat them,” Remus said.  
  
Harry slumped, the force of will he’d brought to bear on the staff draining out of his eyes and body.  
  
“They called him a Death Eater,” he said, shuffling toward Snape’s room a few steps, then stopping, visibly preventing himself from moving closer. “I didn’t want them thinking they could get away with anything. Neglecting him, I mean.” He stared at Snape’s door, fingers twisting the hem of his jumper.  
  
“They wouldn’t,” Hermione said.   
  
Remus tried to smile. “You’d see to that.”  
  
“I won’t come back.” Harry looked away from the door, sinking down on the bench, raising one bruised hand to finger a scratch on his chin. “I just wanted to be sure he was going to be taken care of.”  
  
Hermione sat next to him and took hold of his free hand, scowling worriedly at it. Ron sat next to her, awkward.  
  
“You won’t come back? Why?” Remus asked.  
  
Ron made a sound as if to silence Remus, but Hermione slapped his arm.  
  
“He saved your life in Knockturn Alley,” Remus said. “Dumbledore and I saw it.”  
  
“That was reflex,” Harry said ruefully.  
  
“And you saved his,” Remus went on. “Was that reflex too?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “He … he sent me away, Remus. He … he doesn’t want me. I don’t blame him. I’ve only … he lost his job because of me, he lost his home, he almost lost his life…” He shook his head again, violently, casting off hope. “He’s not stupid. Why would he want me now?”  
  
“Why did he ever want you?” Remus said gently. Harry stared up at him.  
  
“I don’t mean it like that,” Remus said. “I mean, you haven’t changed…” He choked on the words  _you’re the same person he fell in love with,_  wondering if he really believed that himself.  
  
“Never mind, Remus,” Harry said softly, his gaze again dropping to the cold tiled floor. “You were right. You were all right, just not in the way you thought. He wasn’t bad for me. I was bad for  _him._  He deserves to be left in peace.”  
  
“Harry—” Ron choked out. Hermione immediately glared at him, but he made a face at her and continued. “Harry. Mate, I hate having to say this, but … he came looking for you. At the Burrow, I mean. I saw him. He was worried. I …” Ron shrugged, unable to look up at Harry, not seeing that Harry hadn’t raised his own eyes. “I’m only saying that, you know, I think he does care about you.”  
  
Harry sighed. “You don’t know, Ron …” He glanced at his friend. “Thanks. But you don’t know what happened.” Another dismal headshake, then he looked up at Remus. “I … how did the aurors know … I mean, to show up in Wales and at the Malfoys’?”  
  
“Dumbledore sent them,” Remus said. “When they got to Malfoy Manor, Draco told them where you’d gone. Albus didn’t want you to …”  
  
Harry smiled, coldly. “He didn’t want me doing anything I’d regret. Or anything  _he’d_  regret, more like.”  
  
Remus didn’t argue the distinction.  
  
“The only thing I regret is not getting there faster,” Harry said. Remus knew he didn’t mean Malfoy Manor.  _There,_  for Harry, was wherever Severus was.  
  
“D’you want to go home?” Hermione suggested gently. “Get some rest?”  
  
Harry nodded and the trio got up.  
  
“Come back with me, mate,” Ron said.  
  
“Yes,” Hermione added.   
  
“No. I’ve got a place in town. I’ll stay there.” His words were monotonous, lifeless. “Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m just tired.” He forced his head up, forced himself to meet their eyes. Remus wondered if he really believed he was fooling them.  
  
“We’ll go along with you,” Hermione said.  
  
“No.” The denial was quick, absolute. “I need to be alone for a bit. I’ll be in touch.”  
  
 _Why doesn’t he want them to know where he lives?_  Remus wondered if Harry even noticed the hurt in his friends’ eyes. Then again, was there any reason for Harry to expect more than “good riddance” from his friends, if his relationship with Snape was truly over?  _No wonder he doesn’t want their company while he grieves._  
  
“I’ll walk down with you all,” he said. “We can apparate from the lobby.”  
  
Remus herded the three of them out and downstairs. He waited until they’d reached the lobby and Ron and Hermione had hugged Harry and apparated. Then he said:  
  
“There’ll probably be an investigation of all this—“  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “Dumbledore stopped to speak to me before he went to the Ministry.”   
  
“What did he say?”  _What did he say to you when he learned you’d tortured Narcissa, interrogated Draco, and annihilated Gregor Snape?_  
  
Harry snorted softly. “He said he forgave me. I told him maybe someday I’d forgive him.”  
  
Remus closed his eyes. “Harry, Albus has always tried to do what was best for all of us.” He opened his eyes; Harry was watching him, calm, cool – unreachable.  
  
“The scary thing is, Remus, I believe that.” He stepped back, hesitated. “Thank you, Remus, for everything.”  
  
“Har—“  
  
Harry disappeared even as Remus reached out to stop him. The werewolf sighed and took himself home.  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry sipped his tea and fingered the Daily Prophet, tapping the headline as he scanned the words over and over.  
  
  
  


_VIGILANTE POTTER?_

_  
  
The Daily Prophet has learned that Harry Potter, slayer of He Who Must Not Be Named and hero of the wizarding world, pursued his own form of justice against those who attacked and destroyed Castle Snape mere days ago.  
  
Sources in the Ministry of Magic confirm that Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, widow and son of slain Death Eater Lucius Malfoy, have been arrested for conspiracy in the attempted murder of the Boy Who Lived, as well as former Hogwarts Professor and follower of He Who Must Not Be Named, Severus Snape.  
  
Details are still unclear, but Ministry sources have indicated that Harry Potter discovered the plot against him and took action on his own, without Ministry sanction or approval.  
  
“He stepped beyond his authority,” the source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Daily Prophet. “He should have reported what he knew to the Ministry and let us handle it, instead of going off like a rogue wizard, blowing things up and assaulting people.”  
  
When asked who was blown up and assaulted, the source refused further comment, but local Muggle newspapers have reported the destruction of Summerisle Hall in Wales, the home of one Gregor Snape, cousin of Severus Snape and the Malfoys. Though nothing had been seen or heard of G. Snape in years, he had once been believed to be a follower of He –_  
  
  
  
Harry pushed the paper away from him and rocked his half-empty teacup back and forth, unable to work up more than a sputter of anger at a newspaper that couldn’t even bring itself to print the name of a dead man, but had the bollocks to imply that  _he_  was now the bad guy for defending himself. They’d be calling him the second Voldemort any day now. So much for being the hero of the wizarding world.  
  
Then again, he was happy to be rid of that title, if he could at the same time be rid of all the rubbish that went with it. He really just wanted to be let alone to live his life, learn to make a living doing something he loved and was good at …  
  
And Severus. His stomach clenched, and he smiled wryly at the serendipity that there was little enough in there to be sick from. He’d been living off tea and stale biscuits for several days, unable to dredge up interest in either shopping or eating. A narrow edge of his mind was fully aware he couldn’t keep on like this, but that edge had yet to cut through the misery weighing him down.  
  
A year ago, who could have predicted he’d be here like this, in his own flat, alone, a killer many times over but caring less about that than about his nasty, evil, greasy former teacher who …  
  
Harry squeezed his eyes shut.  _I won’t cry about this like a bloody child. I won’t._  
  
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids for a moment, breathing deliberately, listening to the soft creak of floorboards as someone passed in the corridor outside.  
  
When the footsteps stopped at his door, he raised his head, blinking. Remus, no doubt, come for his daily strafing run of quiet, grating concern.  
  
At the three soft taps, he scooped up his wand and waved it at the door, even though the flat was so small the handle was nearly within reach from his position at the rickety kitchen table.  
  
When he heard the hinges squeak, he said, “Come on in, Remus,” quickly folding up the paper so the front page was hidden by other, lesser stories. He didn’t need another lecture.  
  
Hedwig chittered suddenly, an eager, surprising sound, and stretched her wings as if about to take off. Harry got up, startled, and turned around to see Severus standing in the doorway.  
  
The room wavered, just for an instant, and Harry grabbed the back of his chair. Hedwig resettled, stretching her head toward Severus and hooting softly.  
  
Severus looked around, not entering even when he spotted Harry. He looked thinner, paler; his hair, bound back, unveiled the hard edges of his face, sketched with half-healed cuts. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the ivory grip of the cane in his hand, and Harry swallowed against a sudden urge to sob.  
  
He choked out the words “come in” and watched, heart constricted, as Severus limped into the room. Harry shut the door behind him and Severus turned to face him, black eyes glittering.  
  
“I …” Clench. Unclench.   
  
Harry closed his eyes. Had he the coldest resolve in the world, it could not have stood in the face of the terrible effort he read in Severus’ body and hands.  
  
Severus whispered, “Forgive me.”  
  
Harry’s throat spasmed. He opened his eyes to Severus’ wretched expression and his own voice came out no louder.  
  
“Please sit down.”  
  
Severus shook his head – Harry had a fleeting, painful memory of the many verbal cuffs Severus had delivered over his tactical errors.  
  
“I – no. I don’t ask … that is, I ask only that you hear my apology.”  
  
 _I hear it,_  Harry thought. He felt sick. He’d longed for this, and now every word knifed into his gut.  
  
“Please,” he tried again, barely hearing his own words. “Please sit down.”  _Please don’t leave._  
  
Instead, Severus paced, small, painful steps in the tiny flat, door to window and back again, his words just as small and painful.  
  
“I … I do not ask you to … to …”   
  
“You don’t need to ask,” Harry said. “I thought you blamed me. I thought you hated me. And I thought you had reason.”  
  
Severus stopped to glare at him.  
  
“I … it was my fault they did it,” Harry said miserably. “It was all –”  
  
“It was not your fault,” Severus snapped, for the first time sounding like himself. “It was because of you, yes. It was not your  _fault._  You must learn the difference.”  
  
Harry stared at the warped wooden floor. “All I know is you lost everything because of me. If anything I should apologise to you.”  
  
Silence. He glanced up.  
  
“If it will make you stop feeling sorry for yourself and pay attention,” Severus said, “by all means, go ahead.”  
  
Harry smiled. Tremulously, weakly, but he smiled. After all, he was here, wasn’t he? It meant something. It had to.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You don’t have anything to apologise for,” Severus replied, impatient. “But if you had, you’d be forgiven. Now, if we might move on to my apology?”  
  
“You don’t need to—”  
  
Another glare, this one angry, frightened, so naked Harry felt his insides plummet.  
  
“What do you know about need?” Severus spoke through clenched teeth, squeezing out the bitter words. “I came here – I came to  _you_  – to say this, these puling words of apology. You know  _nothing_  of need.” He turned his face away, as if disgusted, his knuckles white around the head of the cane.  
  
“I don’t even know who I  _am_  any more.” He slammed the cane against the wall, flung it, grabbing the doorjamb for balance as the stick spun and clattered across the floor. “ _Damn_  you. Damn you for doing this to me. You’ve taken everything –  _everything_  – from me and replaced it with you.”  
  
“I  _know!”_  Harry shouted, anguished. “I  _know_  I have. I’m sorry. I – if I could …” The last two telling words of Severus’ sentence sank in and a chill of understanding trickled down Harry’s spine. Haltingly, he moved, crossing the few feet that separated them.   
  
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “But you did the same thing to me.”  
  
Gingerly, he wrapped his arms around Severus; it was like hugging a stone, unresisting, but unresponsive.  
  
 _“Please,”_  Harry whispered against Severus’ throat, forcing the word out against the hurt knotted in his chest. He felt Severus swallow; the stone slowly crumbled around him. Severus bent his head against Harry’s and his arms slid about his shoulders, binding, strangling-tight.  
  
“I was angry,” Severus said against his temple. “I was afraid.”  
  
 _I know,_  Harry thought.  
  
“I did not … intend to hurt you.”  
  
Harry laughed, hopelessly. “I don’t care if you hurt me.”  
  
That generated a similar laugh from Severus; Harry knew he recognised the foolishness of the statement. They both did; it was inevitable that they would hurt one another.  
  
A question struck Harry and he drew back a few inches, by no means easing his hold. “How did you find me?”  
  
Severus looked down at him from hooded, unreadable black eyes. “Lupin.”  
  
“He said he wouldn’t tell anyone.”  
  
“Well, I did threaten him.”  
  
“What?” Harry blurted, horrified.  
  
“I told him if he didn’t tell me, I’d beg.” Severus smirked. “He crumbled.”  
  
Harry processed that in amazement.  
  
“He also informed me that it was you rescued me from my cousin’s dungeon. In case I had not realised it, which I had, of course.”  
  
“You were unconscious,” Harry said. Severus shrugged.  
  
“Nevertheless.”  
  
“S-Severus ...”  
  
Severus waited, still gazing down at him, his face stony as ever.  
  
“You’re not … you won’t leave, will you?”  
  
“That depends,” Severus said. “Have you any tea in this wretched hovel?”  
  
Harry smiled, standing on his toes. “I have tea,” he said, the last word a breath against Severus’ lips, like a spell softening that hard mouth for Harry to kiss, to taste, to probe wildly with his tongue as if deep within were the air he needed to live. Severus’ hands slid down his back, pulling them hard together, into one another, his scent and strength so overwhelming that Harry sobbed at the back of his throat, breaking away to bury his face again in Severus’ neck, feeling the erratic pulse there against his damp eyes.  
  
“I thought—” he blurted.  
  
“Don’t.”  
  
Harry felt the word against his face as well as hearing it. Hands framed his head and he was presented to the sight of Severus scowling down at him.   
  
“Harry. It’s done with. I am here.”  
  
Harry beamed at the pale, stern face. “Right. Don’t think. I can do that.”  
  
Severus smiled, the faint twitching quirk of the mouth Harry suspected only he ever recognized as amusement. His thumbs rubbed across Harry’s cheekbones and he purred, “Idiot Gryffindor. How do I get myself into these situations?”  
  
“I love you,” Harry whispered.  
  
Severus’ answering whisper had an edge to it. “You’re a fool.”  
  
“I know.” Harry turned his head briefly to kiss Severus’ right palm. “Can we … I want to …” He blushed all over his body, blazing hot, as if he had never done this, or even spoken of it, before.  
  
Severus acquired a long-suffering look. “No tea?”  
  
Harry nearly flung them toward the bed – then remembered the man’s injured leg. And other injuries.  
  
“If … if you want to,” he said, easing his death grip on Severus’ waist. “I mean … d’you want to sit down, first?” He indicated the couch and Severus glanced that way, then let his gaze travel a few feet beyond, to the lumpy brass bed. A fresh rush of heat flooded Harry’s body.   
  
“If you feel, you know, up to it,” he stammered.  
  
“Even were I at death’s door, which I expect to prove to you is not the case—” Severus grabbed Harry and pulled them tight together – “Surely you can’t think I’d choose spending my last moments  _talking_  with you, rather than –”  
  
“All right, all right.” Harry chuckled. “I get the –”  
  
His final word was engulfed in a devouring kiss. Severus’ tongue slid deep, so deep, so hot, Harry felt as if his entire body were being licked. From the inside, he thought, and his cock pulsed, full and needy already.  
  
But he pushed Severus away, firmly, despite knowing he had to look as aroused – as crazed – as he felt.   
  
He caught his breath and said, “I want to see you. I want t-to – ” He stammered and cursed himself mentally. “I want to make love to you.”  
  
Severus’ brows rose. He held his hands away from his body, saying, “I’ll not stop you.”  
  
For an instant Harry panicked. Once given permission, he felt too drunk on lust to think of how to proceed. But as ever, his instincts came to his rescue. He reached out, unfastening Severus’ cloak and laying it aside, undoing the impossibly small buttons with damnably clumsy fingers until coat and shirt hung open on Severus’ frame. For a moment Harry gazed at the wiry-muscled chest, scattered with bruises and black hair. Then he glanced at Severus’ face.  
  
“Odd,” the man purred, “to find such a clumsy undressing arousing.”  
  
“No heckling,” Harry murmured, laying his hands on Severus’ chest, feeling his palms shape to the slight curve of his pectoral muscles. He stroked outward, feeling the abrupt inhalation as his thumbs rubbed rough across Severus’ nipples. He pushed shirt and coat off the bony shoulders and set them, too, on the sofa, then turned back to Severus, now waiting with arms crossed, the faintest of smiles pinching the corners of his eyes and mouth.  
  
Harry drew his wand, seeing the flicker of surprise in Severus’ eyes, and waited for it to change to alarm or anger or refusal. When it didn’t, Harry grinned and, with a delicate flourish, said,  _“Mobilicorpus.”_  
  
Gently Snape was lifted into the air, a few inches only, and borne backward to the bed. Carefully Harry canted the wand, tilting Severus slowly horizontal, then letting him drift onto the bed, light as a feather.  
  
Snape was really warring with a smile when Harry came over and sat on the bed beside his hip.  
  
“You’ve acquired some finesse,” he admitted; he hadn’t even uncrossed his arms. That level of comfort – of trust – made Harry’s throat tighten. He set his wand on the bedside table – using a quick charm to keep it from rolling off the hopelessly uneven surface – and took hold of Severus’ wrists.  
  
Gently he pulled the man’s arms out of the way and bent, his mouth beginning a leisurely journey, wet kisses and lingering licks and choice nibblings, from Severus’ throat to the quivering pale flesh just above his trouser button. Sliding his hands down both thighs, Harry pressed his face into the curve between, breathing deep and feeling Severus jump as he shaped the man’s swelling cock with his mouth – despite the layers of cloth in between.  
  
“What are you doing?” Snape asked, his tone almost conversational, except for the faint strain Harry thought he could hear; then again it was hard to be sure over the clamor of his own pounding heart and boiling blood.  
  
“Enjoying myself,” he said, then enveloped Snape’s cock sideways, his mouth full of rough cotton over hot, arching flesh. Severus’ hips twitched, seeking more contact, and a hand grasped Harry’s thigh – then let go.  
  
Harry smiled around his mouthful of cloth and cock, then swung his body ’round, cupping his palm over Severus’ erection and rubbing, seeing Severus’ eyes fall shut and his mouth fall open.  
  
“Harry…”  
  
Suddenly it was too much – too little, too slow. Panting, Harry opened Severus’ trousers with shaking hands, dragging them and smalls away with no delicacy whatever and falling upon the flushed erection that bobbed free between pale, black-haired thighs. Sliding his hands under to clutch the thin cheeks, he sucked ferociously, licked the entire length, up one side and down the other, and Severus gasped and jerked upright, hands enfolding his head.  
  
“Harry …”  
  
Harry continued, merciless, until Severus was stone-hard in his mouth; then he raised his head with a final long lick to the underside of Severus’ cock that made the man shiver.  
  
“I want you inside me,” Harry said – the words making him shiver in turn. He rose to his knees, silently  _accio’d_  his wand and passed it over himself, thinking the spell that only a year before he couldn’t have imagined casting without words.  
  
Naked, he set his wand aside and Severus clasped his hips, no doubt to pull him closer.  
  
Then – again – he stopped, hands loose on Harry’s flesh, no longer guiding but merely touching.  
  
Harry grinned once more and crawled over Severus’ body, lying full length and full weight atop him for a long moment of hungry, breathless kissing, ending with:  
  
“I want you in me. Now.” Harry sat up and Severus’ hands again found the curves of his arse, this time stroking, asking.  
  
“Do you wish me to ..?” His fingers slid between the muscled flesh and paused. Harry nodded and Severus murmured a word, then slipped a slick and tingling digit in, slow and deep. Harry gasped and rocked backward, one hand working his aching erection, half expecting to get that hand slapped away. But Severus only prepared him with his usual agile, clever strokes, until Harry shuddered and cried, “Enough.” His hand left his own cock and fumbled back to surround Severus’, guiding the hard length into him in one long, firm motion. For a moment he sat, shaking, eyes tearing, Severus a pale blur under him, his hands now warm on Harry’s trembling thighs.  
  
“God…” he gasped. “Severus … move … please …”  
  
The hands on his thighs now gripped his hips with purpose, and Severus drove upward, hard, deep thrusts in time to his own uncontrolled grunts and Harry’s small helpless cries. For an unmeasurable time Harry simply rode him, overwhelmed, unable to think, but when Severus slowed his rhythm, Harry breathed for what felt like the first time ever, and took his cock in his shaking, sweating hands. He came on the second squeeze, hard, almost painfully, and moaned, flopping forward as Severus suddenly sped up, hammering into his body for a few more seconds before he too shuddered.   
  
“Harry …” he groaned, clutching weakly at Harry’s legs and back as he rode out his orgasm, going limp and panting at last.  
  
Harry draped his body like a wet towel over Severus’, sliding a little in their mingled sweat, and they breathed hard in each other’s ears for a time.  
  
Then, hoarsely, Severus said, “Did I pass the test?”  
  
“Test?” Harry whispered, his own voice scraped raw from passion.  
  
“You wanted to know if I could take direction as well as give it.”   
  
Harry raised up a little; Severus examined his face as he considered.  
  
“Don’t deny it.”  
  
“I … maybe,” Harry admitted. He shouldn’t be surprised Severus had known. “Partly. But I think … I wanted to know if I could. You know? If it’d be okay.”  
  
“With you or with me?”  
  
“Both.” Realising where this was going, Harry groaned. “And don’t bother with some sage, snide remarks about the fact that I’m growing up, either.”  
  
“You must realise that I wish you to,” Severus said. “I have no fear of a lover taking the lead in bed.”  
  
“As long as I don’t try it anywhere else, eh?” Harry said, meaning it as a joke.  
  
“The day you legitimately can, rest assured I shall stand back and let you.”  
  
“God.” Harry rolled his eyes and slipped off Severus’ body, flopping onto his back. “I can’t win with you.” He could have hexed himself the instant the words left his mouth, for giving the man such an opening.   
  
But Snape simply raised his arms, laced his fingers behind his head, and said, “Yes. I’ve always rather liked that about you.”  
  
Harry chuckled, scooting over again until he could rest his head on Severus’ chest and his hand on the man’s stomach. The lullaby of the strong, steady heartbeat against his ear had carried him halfway to sleep when Severus spoke again.  
  
“This flat.”  
  
Harry waited for a verb. It didn’t happen.  
  
He didn’t bother to lift his head this time. “What about it?”  
  
“Surely you can afford better than this.”  
  
Harry snuggled closer. God, he’d missed Severus’ scent, missed it like losing a limb. “I didn’t care when it was just me. We can …” His heart clenched, and some tiny, logical part of his brain laughed; without moving or saying a word, Severus was still able to halt his headlong plunges. “If … w-we can move, if you want to. That is …”  
  
Severus sighed. “Don’t allow me to … to mean this much to you. It is a mistake.”  
  
Despite the cold that always pooled in his stomach when Severus talked like this, Harry shrugged, earning a grunt when his shoulder dug into Severus’ side. “So far I’ve survived every mistake I’ve ever made – and a lot of other people’s mistakes, too. I’ll survive this one.”  
  
A wryly amused hum vibrated against his ear. “I cannot argue with that.” His hand came up to slip into Harry’s hair, cradling his head. “Sleep, Potter.”  
  
“Yes, professor.” Harry spoiled the effect by giggling. Severus squeezed him in gentle reprimand, and within minutes both men fell into their first sound sleep in days.  
  


* * *

  
  
Laden with his morning shopping – like an old woman, like someone’s mother, he thought with a snort – Snape limped around the corner into the lane Harry lived on, deftly avoiding the handful of other early risers. Granted, the shopping was following him through midair on a  _pendero_  charm rather than dangling from his free hand, but the image was still valid.  
  
He stopped abruptly in front of a second-hand shop, his hope of returning before the lazy brat awoke dashed. Across the street, Harry stood poised in the doorway of his building, rumpled, hair askew, face white with panic. He scanned the street, wildly, heedless of the stares of other wizards and witches – and when he locked on to Snape, he flushed, eyes blazing.  
  
Snape thought:  _and I said you know nothing of need._  
  
He sensed the throb of uncontrolled magic and, from the corner of his eye, saw the display window of the shop quiver. He turned his face away and the magic washed over him like a breaking wave. The window shattered with a surprisingly soft sound, the shards raining musically to the cobblestones at his feet.   
  
Shaking the glass from his robes, Snape limped swiftly across the street, ignoring the startled comments of passers-by. Harry’s eyes never left his face, and Snape knew before he grabbed Harry’s arm that the boy was shaking.  
  
“Come inside,” he said, pushing Harry ahead of him. He had to almost bodily force Harry up the stairs; he seemed to be in a state of shock. When they were in Harry’s rooms again, door closed, Snape dropped shopping sack and cane and seized the boy’s arms with both hands. Magic sparked from Harry’s skin, sending little shocks against Snape’s palms.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
In turn, Harry twined his fingers into the front of Snape’s robes.  
  
“You left,” he said, his eyes confused, gaping. “I thought—”  
  
“I went up the street for tea. For food,” Snape growled, only now realizing that leaving while Harry was still asleep could be open to other interpretations. “You’ve nothing in the house, boy. A mouse would starve.”  
  
“I … I thought …” A dry sob choked off the words and Harry pulled Snape close, fists still knotted in his robes. To Snape’s astonishment, the boy shook him. “Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t leave me again.”  
  
“Harry. Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Promise,” Harry demanded, red-faced.  
  
Snape grabbed his wrists, feeling Harry’s magic coursing, flaring under the pale skin, stabbing into him. “Stop it.”  
  
“Promise!”   
  
Snape shook Harry, hard, freeing himself before the pain forced him to let go. “I can’t! I can’t promise  _anything!”_  He spun away from the shaking boy, slamming a fist against the wall. “Damn you. I won’t be your pet, your tame Death Eater on a leash. I can  _not_  be what you wish me to be. How many times must I tell you?”  
  
He turned, prepared to continue the lecture, but faltered at the sight of the wizard who’d killed Voldemort – who’d blasted him free of Gregor’s prison almost without effort – standing before him, hunched and trembling.  
  
“All I want is for you to be with me,” Harry said. He moved close, moved against Snape and wrapped himself around him, as if he had the right.  
  
 _Does he not?_  Snape mocked himself.  
  
“You cannot …” He swallowed, but there was no way out of saying it. “You are wrong to … to want me.”  
  
Harry pressed his face into Snape’s chest, silent denial. At last – because only a fool resists the irresistible – Snape let his own arms surround the knotted body against his, feeling the tension melt as silent minutes passed.  
  
Into Harry’s rumpled hair, he said, “What are you going to do?”  
  
Harry raised his face, pale, questioning. He looked so tired, so much older than his years, Snape thought, knowing that was partly his fault.  
  
“With your life,” Snape explained. “What are you going to do about school? Work? Everything?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said, uncaring. “Don’t leave me.”  
  
He buried his face in Severus’ throat, arms about him, ruthlessly tight.  
  
“I won’t.” Snape closed his eyes. “How can I?”


End file.
